Guest privilege escalation via missing APN restriction checks
Published Oct 27, 2023 · Updated May 5, 2025
Privilege escalation in Google Android 11, 12, 12L, and 13 allows local users to change APN settings from a Guest account. ApnEditor.onCreate starts the APN editor without checking whether the current user is an administrator or has the DISALLOW_CONFIG_MOBILE_NETWORKS restriction. A local Guest account can therefore alter mobile-network configuration without user interaction or additional execution privileges.
Summary
What happened
Privilege escalation in Google Android 11, 12, 12L, and 13 allows local users to change APN settings from a Guest account. ApnEditor.onCreate starts the APN editor without checking whether the current user is an administrator or has the DISALLOW_CONFIG_MOBILE_NETWORKS restriction. A local Guest account can therefore alter mobile-network configuration without user interaction or additional execution privileges.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-40125
- Published
- Oct 27, 2023
- Updated
- May 5, 2025
- Vendor
- Product
- Android
- Classifications
- T1404
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Oct 27, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- May 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?
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- Affected versionversion=11
- Affected versionversion=12
- Affected versionversion=12L
- Affected versionversion=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
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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