BlackBerry’s Security Incident Response Team (BBSIRT) today released a security advisory resolving a remote code execution vulnerability in BlackBerry 10.
The company says it has no knowledge of attacks actively exploiting this bug in the wild.
“BlackBerry is committed to protecting customers from potential security risks, and while there are no known attacks targeting customers at this time, we recommend that all BlackBerry 10 smartphone customers apply the latest software update to be protected from this issue,” said Scott Totzke, the senior vice president of security at the company.
However, the advisory notes that the potential for an attacker to exploit this bug is severely limited and the risk it poses to users is limited by the fact that the attacker would need either physical access to the device in question or significant interaction from the customer.
Successful exploitation, the advisory notes, would require an attacker to send a maliciously crafted message over a Wi-Fi network to what is known as the qconnDoor service. Furthermore, exploitation of the bug requires that the targeted user is operating the device in development mode. In an alternate scenario, BBSIRT notes, an attacker could exploit an unpatched phone by connecting it to a computer and sending the exploit to the qconnDoor service directly.
“A stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability exists in the qconnDoor service supplied with affected versions of BlackBerry 10 OS. The qconnDoor service is used by BlackBerry 10 OS to provide developer access, such as shell and remote debugging capabilities, to the smartphone,” the advisory says.
“Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could potentially result in an attacker terminating the qconnDoor service running on a user’s BlackBerry smartphone. In addition, the attacker could potentially execute code on the user’s BlackBerry smartphone with the privileges of the root user (superuser).”
