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Over the past few years, several AI-powered features have been added to mobile phones that allow users to better search and understand their messages. One effect of this change is increased 0-click attack surface, as efficient analysis often requires message media to be decoded before the message is opened by the user. One such feature is audio transcription. Incoming SMS and RCS audio attachments received by Google Messages are now automatically decoded with no user interaction. As a result, audio decoders are now in the 0-click attack surface of most Android phones. I’ve spent a fair bit of time investigating these decoders, first reporting CVE-2025-49415 in the Monkey’s Audio codec on Samsung devices. Based on this research, the team reviewed the Dolby Unified Decoder, and Ivan Fratric and I reported CVE-2025-54957 . This vulnerability is likely in the 0-click attack surface of most Android devices in use today. In parallel, Seth Jenkins investigated a driver accessible from the sandbox the decoder runs in on a Pixel 9, and reported CVE-2025-36934. As I’ve shared this research, vendors as well as members of the security community have questioned whether such vulnerabilities are exploitable, as well as whether 0-click exploits are possible for all but the most well-resourced attackers in the modern Android Security environment. We were also asked whether code execution in the context of a media decoder is practically useful to an attacker and how platforms can reduce the risks such a capability presents to users. To answer these questions, Project Zero wrote a 0-click exploit chain targeting the Pixel 9. We hope this research will help defenders better understand how these attacks work in the wild, the strengths and weaknesses of Android’s security features with regards to preventing such attacks, and the importance of remediating media and driver vulnerabilities on mobile devices. The exploit will be detailed in three blog posts. Part 1 of this series will describe how we exploited CVE-2025-54957 to gain arbitrary code execution in the mediacodec context of a Google Pixel 9. Part 2 of this series will describe how we exploited CVE-2025-36934 to escalate privileges from mediacodec to kernel on this device. Part 3 will discuss lessons learned and recommendations for preventing similar exploits on mobile devices. The vulnerabilities discussed in these posts were fixed as of January 5, 2026. The Dolby Unified Decoder The Dolby Unified Decoder component (UDC) is a library that provides support for the Dolby Digital (DD) and Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) audio formats. These formats are also known as AC-3 and EAC-3 respectively. A public specification is available for these formats. The UDC is integrated into a variety of hardware and platforms, including Android, iOS, Windows and media streaming devices. It is shipped to most OEMs as a binary ‘blob’ with limited symbols, which is then statically linked into a shared library. On the Pixel 9, the UDC is i

While on Project Zero, we aim for our research to be leading-edge, our blog design was … not so much. We welcome readers to our shiny new blog! For the occasion, we asked members of Project Zero to dust off old blog posts that never quite saw the light of day. And while we wish we could say the techniques they cover are no longer relevant, there is still a lot of work that needs to be done to protect users against zero days. Our new blog will continue to shine a light on the capabilities of attackers and the many opportunities that exist to protect against them. From 2016: Windows Exploitation Techniques: Race conditions with path lookups by James Forshaw From 2017: Thinking Outside The Box by Jann Horn

Preface Hello from the future! This is a blogpost I originally drafted in early 2017. I wrote what I intended to be the first half of this post (about escaping from the VM to the VirtualBox host userspace process with CVE-2017-3558 ), but I never got around to writing the second half ( going from the VirtualBox host userspace process to the host kernel ), and eventually sorta forgot about this old post draft… But it seems a bit sad to just leave this old draft rotting around forever, so I decided to put it in our blogpost queue now, 8 years after I originally drafted it. I’ve very lightly edited it now (added some links, fixed some grammar), but it’s still almost as I drafted it back then. When you read this post, keep in mind that unless otherwise noted, it is describing the situation as of 2017. Though a lot of the described code seems to not have changed much since then… Introduction VM software typically offers multiple networking modes, including a NAT mode that causes traffic from the VM to appear as normal traffic from the host system. Both QEMU and VirtualBox use forks of Slirp for this. Slirp is described as follows on its homepage: Slirp emulates a PPP or SLIP connection over a normal terminal. This is an actual PPP or SLIP link, firewalled for people’s protection. It makes a quick way to connect your Palm Pilot over the Internet via your Unix or Linux box!!! You don’t need to mess around with your /etc/inetd.conf or your /etc/ppp/options on your system. Slirp is a useful basis for VM networking because it can parse raw IP packets (coming from the emulated network adapter) and forward their contents to the network using the host operating system’s normal, unprivileged networking APIs. Therefore, Slirp can run in the host’s userspace and doesn’t need any special kernel support. Both QEMU and VirtualBox don’t directly use the upstream Slirp code, but instead use patched versions where, for example, the feature for setting up port forwards by talking to a magic IP address is removed. Especially in VirtualBox, the Slirp code has been altered a lot. This post describes an issue in VirtualBox and how it can be exploited. Some parts are specific to the host operating system; in those cases, this post focuses on the situation on Linux. The packet heap in VirtualBox The VirtualBox version of Slirp uses a custom zone allocator for storing packet data, in particular, incoming ethernet frames. Each NAT network interface has its own zone ( zone_clust ) with nmbclusters=1024+32*64=3072 chunks of size MCLBYTES=2048 . The initial freelist of each zone starts at the high-address end of the zone and linearly progresses towards the low-address end. The heap uses inline metadata; each chunk is prefixed with the following structure: struct item { uint32_t magic ; // (always 0xdead0001) uma_zone_t zone ; // (pointer to the zone; uma_zone_t is struct uma_zone *) uint32_t ref_count ; struct { struct type * le_next ; // (next element) struct type ** le_prev ; /

Google began offering "dark web reports" a while back, but the company has just announced the feature will be going away very soon. In an email to users of the service, Google says it will stop telling you about dark web data leaks in February. This probably won't negatively impact your security or privacy because, as Google points out in its latest email, there's really nothing you can do about the dark web. The dark web reports launched in March 2023 as a perk for Google One subscribers. The reports were expanded to general access in 2024. Now, barely a year later, Google has decided it doesn't see the value in this type of alert for users. Dark web reports provide a list of partially redacted user data retrieved from shadowy forums and sites where such information is bought and sold. However, that's all it is—a list. The dark web consists of so-called hidden services hosted inside the Tor network. You need a special browser or connection tools in order to access Tor hidden services, and its largely anonymous nature has made it a favorite hangout for online criminals. If a company with your personal data has been hacked, that data probably lives somewhere on the dark web . Read full article Comments

Despite being a vast repository of personal information, smartphones used to have little by way of security. That has thankfully changed, but companies like Cellebrite offer law enforcement tools that can bypass security on some devices . The company keeps the specifics quiet, but an anonymous individual recently logged in to a Cellebrite briefing and came away with a list of which of Google's Pixel phones are vulnerable to Cellebrite phone hacking. This person, who goes by the handle rogueFed, posted screenshots from the recent Microsoft Teams meeting to the GrapheneOS forums (spotted by 404 Media ). GrapheneOS is an Android-based operating system that can be installed on select phones, including Pixels. It ships with enhanced security features and no Google services. Because of its popularity among the security-conscious, Cellebrite apparently felt the need to include it in its matrix of Pixel phone support. The screenshot includes data on the Pixel 6, Pixel 7, Pixel 8, and Pixel 9 family. It does not list the Pixel 10 series , which launched just a few months ago. The phone support is split up into three different conditions: before first unlock, after first unlock, and unlocked. The before first unlock (BFU) state means the phone has not been unlocked since restarting, so all data is encrypted. This is traditionally the most secure state for a phone. In the after first unlock (AFU) state, data extraction is easier. And naturally, an unlocked phone is open season on your data. Read full article Comments

On Thursday, a team of researchers led by Microsoft announced that they had discovered, and possibly patched, what they're terming a biological zero-day—an unrecognized security hole in a system that protects us from biological threats. The system at risk screens purchases of DNA sequences to determine when someone's ordering DNA that encodes a toxin or dangerous virus. But, the researchers argue, it has become increasingly vulnerable to missing a new threat: AI-designed toxins. How big of a threat is this? To understand, you have to know a bit more about both existing biosurveillance programs and the capabilities of AI-designed proteins. Catching the bad ones Biological threats come in a variety of forms. Some are pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria. Others are protein-based toxins, like the ricin that was sent to the White House in 2003. Still others are chemical toxins that are produced through enzymatic reactions, like the molecules associated with red tide . All of them get their start through the same fundamental biological process: DNA is transcribed into RNA, which is then used to make proteins. Read full article Comments

As we careen toward a future in which Google has final say over what apps you can run , the company has sought to assuage the community's fears with a blog post and a casual "backstage" video. Google has said again and again since announcing the change that sideloading isn't going anywhere, but it's definitely not going to be as easy. The new information confirms app installs will be more reliant on the cloud, and devs can expect new fees, but there will be an escape hatch for hobbyists. Confirming app verification status will be the job of a new system component called the Android Developer Verifier, which will be rolled out to devices in the next major release of Android 16. Google explains that phones must ensure each app has a package name and signing keys that have been registered with Google at the time of installation. This process may break the popular FOSS storefront F-Droid . It would be impossible for your phone to carry a database of all verified apps, so this process may require Internet access. Google plans to have a local cache of the most common sideloaded apps on devices, but for anything else, an Internet connection is required. Google suggests alternative app stores will be able to use a pre-auth token to bypass network calls, but it's still deciding how that will work. Read full article Comments

Over the past year, Meta has blanketed TV screens around the world with commercials touting the privacy of Whatsapp, its encrypted messenger with a monthly user base of 3 billion people. “It’s private,” one ad campaign featuring the former cast of the Modern Family TV show says. “On Whatsapp, no one can see or hear your personal messages … not even us,” a different series of ads declares. “Serious risks to user data” On Monday, the former head of security for the Meta-owed messaging app filed a federal whistleblower lawsuit that tells a far different narrative. The suit, filed in US District Court for the District of Northern California, recites a litany of purported security and privacy flaws that Meta not only didn’t fix after becoming aware of them, but also kept secret, allegedly in violation of a $5 billion settlement then-Whatsapp parent company Facebook reached with the Federal Trade Commission. The complaint was filed by Attaullah Baig, who became head of WhatsApp security in 2021. Read full article Comments

The sky is falling, and Gmail has supposedly been hacked to bits by malicious parties unknown. Or has it? Reports circulated last week claiming that Gmail was the subject of a major data breach, citing a series of warnings Google has distributed and increasing reports of phishing attacks. The hysteria was short-lived, though. In a brief post on its official blog, Google says that Gmail's security is "strong and effective," and reports to the contrary are mistaken. This story seems to have developed due to a random confluence of security events. Google experienced a Gmail data breach in June, but the attack was limited to the company's corporate Salesforce server. The hacker was able to access publicly available information like business names and contact details, but no private information was compromised. Over the following weeks, Google alerted Gmail users to an increase in phishing attacks in July and August. It didn't offer many details, but many believed the spike in phishing was related to the corporate server breach. Indeed, more people are talking about hacking attempts on social media right now. This led to the claim that Gmail's entire user base of 2.5 billion people was about to be hacked at any moment, with some reports advising everyone to change their passwords and enable two-factor authentication. While that's generally good security advice, Google says the truth is much less dramatic. Read full article Comments

Hacking is hard. Well, sometimes. Other times, you just call up a company's IT service desk and pretend to be an employee who needs a password reset, an Okta multifactor authentication reset, and a Microsoft multifactor authentication reset... and it's done. Without even verifying your identity. So you use that information to log in to the target network and discover a more trusted user who works in IT security. You call the IT service desk back, acting like you are now this second person, and you request the same thing: a password reset, an Okta multifactor authentication reset, and a Microsoft multifactor authentication reset. Again, the desk provides it, no identity verification needed. Read full article Comments

Extensions installed on almost 1 million devices have been overriding key security protections to turn browsers into engines that scrape websites on behalf of a paid service, a researcher said. The 245 extensions, available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, have racked up nearly 909,000 downloads, John Tuckner of SecurityAnnex reported . The extensions serve a wide range of purposes, including managing bookmarks and clipboards, boosting speaker volumes, and generating random numbers. The common thread among all of them: They incorporate MellowTel-js , an open source JavaScript library that allows developers to monetize their extensions. Intentional weakening of browsing protections Tuckner and critics say the monetization works by using the browser extensions to scrape websites on behalf of paying customers, which include AI startups, according to MellowTel founder Arsian Ali. Tuckner reached this conclusion after uncovering close ties between MellowTel and Olostep , a company that bills itself as "the world's most reliable and cost-effective Web scraping API." Olostep says its service “avoids all bot detection and can parallelize up to 100K requests in minutes.” Paying customers submit the locations of browsers they want to access specific webpages. Olostep then uses its installed base of extension users to fulfill the request. Read full article Comments