CVE-2011-1823: Android OS Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2022-09-08
EPSS: 41.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2011-06-09 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-190

Description

The vold volume manager daemon on Android 3.0 and 2.x before 2.3.4 trusts messages that are received from a PF_NETLINK socket, which allows local users to execute arbitrary code and gain root privileges via a negative index that bypasses a maximum-only signed integer check in the DirectVolume::handlePartitionAdded method, which triggers memory corruption, as demonstrated by Gingerbreak.

Affected products

Android: from 2.0 before 2.3.4; 3.0 — fixed in 2.3.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Android 2.3.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/system/core.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=b620a0b1c7ae486e979826200e8e441605b0a5d6
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/system/netd.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=79b579c92afc08ab12c0a5788d61f2dd2934836f
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/system/vold.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=c51920c82463b240e2be0430849837d6fdc5352e
http://androidcommunity.com/gingerbreak-root-for-gingerbread-app-20110421/
http://c-skills.blogspot.com/2011/04/yummy-yummy-gingerbreak.html
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1044765
http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/05/03/google-patches-gingerbreak-exploit-but-dont-worry-we-still-have-root-for-now/
http://xorl.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/android-vold-mpartminors-signedness-issue/
https://exchange.xforce.ibmcloud.com/vulnerabilities/67977
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/system/core.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=b620a0b1c7ae486e979826200e8e441605b0a5d6
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/system/netd.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=79b579c92afc08ab12c0a5788d61f2dd2934836f
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=platform/system/vold.git%3Ba=commit%3Bh=c51920c82463b240e2be0430849837d6fdc5352e

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