Local privilege escalation via unencoded Intent scheme
Published Apr 19, 2023 · Updated Feb 5, 2025
Privilege escalation in Android 11, 12, 12L, and 13 allows local users to launch arbitrary activities through a crafted Intent URI. Intent.toUriInner appends an unencoded scheme to the serialized URI, allowing reserved delimiters to be reparsed as attacker-controlled Intent fields. Exploitation requires local low-privileged code but no user interaction, and the confused-deputy launch reaches activities unavailable to that code.
Summary
What happened
Privilege escalation in Android 11, 12, 12L, and 13 allows local users to launch arbitrary activities through a crafted Intent URI. Intent.toUriInner appends an unencoded scheme to the serialized URI, allowing reserved delimiters to be reparsed as attacker-controlled Intent fields. Exploitation requires local low-privileged code but no user interaction, and the confused-deputy launch reaches activities unavailable to that code.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-21097
- Published
- Apr 19, 2023
- Updated
- Feb 5, 2025
- Vendor
- Google Cloud
- Product
- Android
- Classifications
- CWE-610, T1404
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Apr 19, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Feb 5, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=Android-11 Android-12 Android-12L 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.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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