Huawei Smartphone Factory Reset Protection authorization

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, has been found in Huawei Smartphone. Affected is an unknown function of the component Factory Reset Protection. The manipulation leads to authorization. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2018-7988. It is possible to launch the attack on the physical device. No exploit exists.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Huawei Smartphone (Smartphone Operating System) (affected version unknown) and classified as critical. This issue affects an unknown functionality of the component Factory Reset Protection. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a authorization vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-863. The product performs an authorization check when an actor attempts to access a resource or perform an action, but it does not correctly perform the check. This allows attackers to bypass intended access restrictions. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

There is a Factory Reset Protection (FRP) bypass vulnerability on several smartphones. The system does not sufficiently verify the permission, an attacker uses a data cable to connect the smartphone to another smartphone and then perform a series of specific operations. Successful exploit could allow the attacker bypass the FRP protection.

The bug was discovered 11/14/2018. The weakness was disclosed 11/27/2018 (Website). It is possible to read the advisory at huawei.com. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2018-7988 since 03/09/2018. Attacking locally is a requirement. No form of authentication is needed for a successful exploitation. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 06/12/2023).

The vulnerability was handled as a non-public zero-day exploit for at least 13 days. During that time the estimated underground price was around $5k-$25k.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

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Productinfo

Type

• Smartphone Operating System

Vendor

• Huawei

Name

• Smartphone

License

• commercial

Website

• Vendor: https://www.huawei.com/

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