Local privilege escalation via unsafe signal-handler teardown
Published Mar 24, 2023 · Updated Feb 24, 2025
Use-after-free in Android 13 statsd allows local users with System execution privileges to execute arbitrary code without interaction. The registered signal handler directly invokes teardown paths that use non-signal-safe pthread mutex operations instead of deferring termination to a normal thread. Exploitation requires local System execution privileges and signal timing that reaches the unsafe statsd shutdown path, yielding code execution in the service context.
Summary
What happened
Use-after-free in Android 13 statsd allows local users with System execution privileges to execute arbitrary code without interaction. The registered signal handler directly invokes teardown paths that use non-signal-safe pthread mutex operations instead of deferring termination to a normal thread. Exploitation requires local System execution privileges and signal timing that reaches the unsafe statsd shutdown path, yielding code execution in the service context.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-21020
- Published
- Mar 24, 2023
- Updated
- Feb 24, 2025
- Vendor
- Google Cloud
- Product
- Android
- Classifications
- CWE-416, T1404
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- admin
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Mar 24, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Feb 24, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
Compare your product and version with the public record. A matching version still requires validation against your environment.
Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=Android-13
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
Labels summarize the accepted research assessment. They do not indicate a test against your environment.
Technologies
Your stack
See the directory against your own environment.
Your stack
Check the software in your environment
Book a demo to see how Hinoki identifies affected software and validates exploitability in your environment.
Book a demo