Blackberry solves QuadRooter vulnerabilities on PRIV and DTEK50

Soon after the discovery of QuadRooter vulnerabilities, Blackberry announced that it has fixed the issue on its PRIV and DTEK50, making it the first device maker to solve the issue. On PRIV, it came with the August Marshmallow patch.

Recently, the researchers at the security firm Check Point revealed a set of vulnerabilities affecting 900 million Android smartphones and tablets using Qualcomm chipsets. The findings of the research, presented at DEF CON 24 in Las Vegas, revealed that once affected, the attackers gain a complete control of the affected devices, including any sensitive and personal information stored on the device.

To enable this, the attackers need to trick the users into installing a malicious app that requires no special permissions to take advantage of the vulnerabilities. Some of the latest and popular Android devices, including the ones that are claimed to be the secure devices are prone to this attack.

BlackBerry Priv, Blackphone 1 and Blackphone 2, Google Nexus 5X, Nexus 6 and Nexus 6P, HTC One, HTC M9 and HTC 10, LG G4, LG G5, and LG V10, New Moto X by Motorola, OnePlus One, OnePlus 2 and OnePlus 3, Samsung Galaxy S7 and Samsung S7 Edge, and Sony Xperia Z Ultra were few of the vulnerable smartphones listed by the researchers.

According to Blackberry, the secure boot chain present in all BlackBerry devices will take care the remaining issue. “Back when we launched BlackBerry Powered by Android, we made a public commitment to provide monthly security updates as well as “hotfix” patches for certain issues,” Blackberry announced in a blogpost.

“As soon as we learned about QuadRooter, we immediately began to develop, test, and integrate a fix to deploy through our rapid patching process as quickly as possible,” the company said.

To install the patch, the users need to go to the ‘Settings’ of the phone and do the ‘System Update’.