Note: Until security updates are available, users who wish to protect themselves from the baseband remote code execution vulnerabilities in Samsung’s Exynos chipsets can turn off Wi-Fi calling and Voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) in their device settings. Turning off these settings will remove the exploitation risk of these vulnerabilities.
In late 2022 and early 2023, Project Zero reported eighteen 0-day vulnerabilities in Exynos Modems produced by Samsung Semiconductor. The four most severe of these eighteen vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-24033 and three other vulnerabilities that have yet to be assigned CVE-IDs) allowed for Internet-to-baseband remote code execution. Tests conducted by Project Zero confirm that those four vulnerabilities allow an attacker to remotely compromise a phone at the baseband level with no user interaction, and require only that the attacker know the victim’s phone number. With limited additional research and development, we believe that skilled attackers would be able to quickly create an operational exploit to compromise affected devices silently and remotely.The fourteen other related vulnerabilities (CVE-2023-24072, CVE-2023-24073, CVE-2023-24074, CVE-2023-24075, CVE-2023-24076 and nine other vulnerabilities that are yet to be assigned CVE-IDs) were not as severe, as they require either a malicious mobile network operator or an attacker with local access to the device.
Affected devices
Samsung Semiconductor’s advisories provide the list of Exynos chipsets that are affected by these vulnerabilities. Based on information from public websites that map chipsets to devices, affected products likely include:
Mobile devices from Samsung, including those in the S22, M33, M13, M12, A71, A53, A33, A21, A13, A12 and A04 series;Mobile devices from Vivo, including those in the S16, S15, S6, X70, X60 and X30 series;The Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series of devices from Google;any wearables that use the Exynos W920 chipset; andany vehicles that use the Exynos Auto T5123 chipset.
We expect that patch timelines will vary per manufacturer (for example, affected Pixel devices have already received a fix for CVE-2023-24033 in the March 2023 security update).