Preface: It’s always easy to forget things. Forget even your girlfriend’s birthday. So, whatever security alerts, after more than a year, become worthless. It seems nothing. Maybe not for you. But I totally agree.

Background: If Android phone OS taken unofficial modified (ROOTED) . Users can install and run applications that can only be done with special permissions. Perhaps you will say, if such procedure taken. It is hard to garantee is there any malware implanted. So, run any mobile apps on top will be in risk. As a result. What is the actual meanings wriiten by VMware described in their security advisory?
Do you remember the following news?
The four security vulnerabilities discovered by Microsoft in 2021 affect programs developed by telecommunications companies such as AT&T using the mce Systems framework, as well as other Android and iOS programs that use the mce Systems framework, and affect many Android programs. mce Systems and telecommunications companies have completed patching.

Vulnerability details: A malicious actor, with access to a users rooted device, may be able to bypass the VMware Workspace ONE Content passcode.
For official information, see url – https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2023-0006.html

Preface: A NUMA system is a computer platform that comprises multiple components or assemblies each of which may contain 0 or more CPUs, local memory, and/or IO buses.

Background: On new design Systems servers running Linux, a set of the PCIe slots support a unique feature called 64-bit direct memory access (DMA). DMA improves I/O operations, and, therefore, system performance.
The DMA engine is a generic kernel framework for developing a DMA controller driver. The main goal of DMA is offloading the CPU when it comes to copy memory. A pointer variable whose value is under kernel control and guaranteed by the kernel to always point into the kernel’s memory space, and hence is trustworthy. User pointers should always be verified to refer to user-level memory before being dereferenced.

Vulnerability details: In the Linux kernel before 6.2, mm/memory-tiers.c misinterprets the alloc_memory_type return value (expects it to be NULL in the error case, whereas it is actually an error pointer).
alloc_memory_type() returns error pointers on error instead of NULL. Use IS_ERR() to check the return value to fix this.

Official details: For details, see the link for reference – https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-23005

Preface: Top Programming Languages for Android App Development in 2023 · Most Popular Programming Languages for Android · Kotlin · Java · C# · C++/C · Python. What is C language use-after-free. Use-After-Free (UAF) is a vulnerability related to incorrect use of dynamic memory during program operation. If after freeing a memory location, a program does not clear the pointer to that memory, an attacker can use the error to hack the program.

Background: The Trusty OS runs on the same processor as the Android OS, but Trusty is isolated from the rest of the system by both hardware and software.Trusty provides APIs for developing two classes of applications/services: Trusted applications or services that run on the TEE processor.
Android uses the concept of user-authentication-gated cryptographic keys that requires cryptographic key storage and service provider and user authenticators. Android 9 and higher includes Protected Confirmation, which gives users a way to formally confirm critical transactions, such as payments.

Vulnerability details: In several functions of the Android Linux kernel, there is a possible way to corrupt memory due to a use after free. This could lead to local escalation of privilege with no additional execution privileges needed. User interaction is not needed for exploitation.

Observation: A pointer in C is a variable that points to a memory location that stores a value as opposed to a variable that stores a value in memory. This distinction is important in C programming as developers can change a value in memory for a specific variable even if that variable is out of scope.
I predicted above matter caused the problem happen in shared memory environment.

Official details: See url links for details – https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-20937

Preface: Sandbox evasion techniques. Common evasion techniques include the use of specific assembly instructions, and looking for specific registry keys or file names.

Background: iOS and iPadOS help ensure runtime security by using a “sandbox,” declared entitlements, and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR).
All third-party apps are “sandboxed,” so they are restricted from accessing files stored by other apps or from making changes to the device. Sandboxing is designed to prevent apps from gathering or modifying information stored by other apps. Each app has a unique home directory for its files, which is randomly assigned when the app is installed. If a third-party app needs to access information other than its own, it does so only by using services explicitly provided by iOS and iPadOS.
System files and resources are also shielded from the users’ apps. Most iOS and iPadOS system files and resources run as the nonprivileged user “mobile,” as do all third-party apps. The entire operating system partition is mounted as read-only. Unnecessary tools, such as remote login services, aren’t included in the system software, and APIs don’t allow apps to escalate their own privileges to modify other apps or iOS and iPadOS.

Vulnerability details: The issue was addressed with improved memory handling. This issue is fixed in macOS Ventura 13.2, macOS Monterey 12.6.3, tvOS 16.3, Safari 16.3, watchOS 9.3, iOS 16.3 and iPadOS 16.3, macOS Big Sur 11.7.3. Processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to arbitrary code execution.

Official announcement: For details, please refer to the url for reference – https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213605

Preface: When using the U-Boot UEFI implementation to boot the operating system the UEFI runtime stays in memory. Use-After-Free (UAF) is a vulnerability related to incorrect use of dynamic memory during program operation. If after freeing a memory location, a program does not clear the pointer to that memory, an attacker can use the error to hack the program.

Background: Why am I reminding devops of this design weakness. See whether if you have experienced similar bugs in 2019.
CVE-2019-2215 A use-after-free in binder.c allows an elevation of privilege from an application to the Linux Kernel. No user interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability, however exploitation does require either the installation of a malicious local application or a separate vulnerability in a network facing application.

Vulnerability details: In the Linux kernel 6.0.8, there is a use-after-free in inode_cgwb_move_to_attached in fs/fs-writeback[.]c, related to __list_del_entry_valid.

Official details: For details, please refer to the link – https://lkml.org/lkml/2023/2/22/3

Preface: Back to forty years ago, computer trend in mainstream is command mode. When Microsoft windows GUI born, people favour Windows OS. As time goes by, because of Microsoft system vulnerability, people said I like Linux. As of today, from time-to-time you will heard Linux Kernel vulnerability occurs. Can you change to Microsoft windows now? A classic Linux operating system footprint is smaller than Microsoft windows. Besides, opensource software assists Linux even it has vulnerability. If a merchant is to choose between being cost-effective (free) and paying for the option to license the product. Perhaps they are not so worry about vulnerability. The truth is that even though you pay to but software product it also bundle with vulnerability matter.

Background: CPU supports multiple threads per physical core also referred to as Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) or Hyper-Threading (HT).
AMD and Intel chips with micro-op caches are vulnerable to Spectre-style attacks. The attacks exploit the micro-op cache to leak secrets in three ways:

1. Across the user-kernel boundary.
2. Between two SMT (Simultaneous MultiThreading) threads running on the same physical core
3. Along a mis-speculated execution paths
   This design weakness depends on how the CPU uses his internal memory cache (level 1). So the vulnerability doesn’t specify which brand is vulnerable. Perhaps all is fall into the scope.
   On systems with simultaneous multi-threading (SMT), attacks are possible from the sibling thread, as level 1 cache and branch target buffer(BTB) may be shared between hardware threads in a CPU core. A malicious program running on the sibling thread may influence its peer’s BTB to steer its indirect branch speculations to gadget code, and measure the speculative execution’s side effects left in level 1 cache to infer the victim’s data.

Disable Hyper-Threading (SMT) to Avoid Spectre-Like Exploits, but causing CPU performance issue.

Vulnerability details:
The Linux kernel does not correctly mitigate SMT attacks, as discovered through a strange pattern in the kernel API using STIBP as a mitigation. For details, please refer to this link – https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2167288

Preface: Fundamentally, so called software application system is integrated with operating system, web server/server, database and application software program. If software application program design have relationship with web server bundle application framework. Such impact not only affect a single component.

Background: VMware Carbon Black Cloud Endpoint™ Standard is a next-generation antivirus (NGAV) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) solution that protects against the full spectrum of modern cyberattacks. Furthermore, VMware Carbon Black® App Control™ is used to lock down servers and critical systems, prevent unwanted changes, and ensure continuous compliance with regulatory mandates. VMware Carbon Black App Control software platform requirements for App Control Server, the SQL Server database that stores App Control data, and the App Control Agent.

Vulnerability details: VMware Carbon Black App Control contains an injection vulnerability. VMware has evaluated the severity of this issue to be in the Critical severity range with a maximum CVSSv3 base score of 9.1.
Impact: A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, has been found in VMware Carbon Black App Control up to 8.7.7/8.8.5/8.9.3.

One of the possibilities of encountering the CVE-2023-20858 vulnerability: (Observation) VMware Carbon Black App Control 8.8 works with Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8.
A zero-day vulnerability released by Microsoft this month on February 14, 2023(CVE-2023-21808). Design weakness leads to RCE (Remote Code Execution). This design weakness possible trigger similar Carbon black App-Control vulnerability (CVE-2023-20858).

Official announcement: For details of vulnerability on carbon black product published by VMware. Please refer to official article – https://www.vmware.com/security/advisories/VMSA-2023-0004.html

Preface: Two different methods and names, but similar in function.
AMD CPUs with four cores use simultaneous multithreading to provide eight threads, and most Intel CPUs with two cores use hyper-threading to provide four threads.

Background: In IBM S390 system configuration. Use the smt= and nosmt kernel parameters to control multithreading.
By default, Linux in LPAR mode uses multithreading if it is provided by the hardware.
In Linux terminology, simultaneous multithreading is also known as SMT or Hyper-Threading. With multithreading enabled, a single core on the hardware is mapped to multiple logical CPUs on Linux. Thus, multiple threads can issue instructions to a core simultaneously during each cycle.

Vulnerability details: When SMT is enabled, certain AMD processors may speculatively execute instructions using a target from the sibling thread after an SMT mode switch potentially resulting in information disclosure.

Remark: AMD internally discovered a potential vulnerability where certain AMD processors may speculatively execute instructions at an incorrect return site after an SMT mode switch that may potentially lead to information disclosure. AMD believes that due to existing mitigations applied to address other speculation-based issues, theoretical avenues for potential exploit of CVE-2022-27672 may be limited only to select virtualization environments where a virtual machine is given special privileges. As of this notice, AMD is not aware of any actual real-world exploits based on this behavior.

Official announcement: For details, please refer to the link – https://www.amd.com/en/corporate/product-security/bulletin/amd-sb-1045

Preface: iOS 16 is the sixteenth and current major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple for its iPhone line of products. It was announced at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 6, 2022, as the successor to iOS 15.

Background: Use-after-free is still a common bug class because the task of manually identifying them, especially in large and complex codebases is a challenge. If program does not clear the pointer after freeing memory allocation. It is possible to encounter use-after-free vulnerability.
An attacker can use UAFs to pass arbitrary code or a reference to it. To a program and navigate to the beginning of the code by using a dangling pointer.

Vulnerability details: An app may be able to execute arbitrary code with kernel privileges. A use after free issue was addressed with improved memory management.

Official announcement: For customers’ protection, Apple doesn’t disclose, discuss, or confirm security issues until an investigation has occurred and patches or releases are available. Recent releases are listed on the Apple security updates page.
For details, see the link – https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213635