The team that discovered the Android MasterKey vulnerability in 2013 is here to present another new Android vulnerability with widespread impact: a flaw in Android application handling, allowing malicious applications to escape the normal application sandbox and get special security privileges without any user notification. This can lead to a malicious application having the ability to steal user data, recover passwords and secrets, or in certain cases, compromise the whole Android device. The vulnerability is embedded in all shipped Android devices since January 2010 (Android Eclair 2.1).
This presentation aims to: walk through the technical root cause of this responsibly disclosed vulnerability (Google bug 13678484), explain why it's a problem, show how an attacker would create an exploit for it, and finally demonstrate the exploit against a live device. The presentation will also coincide with the release of a free security scanning tool to help end-users scan for risk of this vulnerability on their end devices.