Hey Google, What Exactly Do Your Security Patches Tell Us? A Large-Scale Empirical Study on Android Patched Vulnerabilities
This work identifies systemic issues in Android security patching that affect users and developers, though it is incremental as it builds on existing vulnerability analysis.
The study analyzed 2,470 patched Android vulnerabilities to assess their characteristics and timelines, finding that patching delays occur for Linux and Qualcomm components, 94% of vulnerabilities are disclosed after patching, and inconsistencies exist in public data sources.
In this paper, we perform a comprehensive study of 2,470 patched Android vulnerabilities that we collect from different data sources such as Android security bulletins, CVEDetails, Qualcomm Code Aurora, AOSP Git repository, and Linux Patchwork. In our data analysis, we focus on determining the affected layers, OS versions, severity levels, and common weakness enumerations (CWE) associated with the patched vulnerabilities. Further, we assess the timeline of each vulnerability, including discovery and patch dates. We find that (i) even though the number of patched vulnerabilities changes considerably from month to month, the relative number of patched vulnerabilities for each severity level remains stable over time, (ii) there is a significant delay in patching vulnerabilities that originate from the Linux community or concern Qualcomm components, even though Linux and Qualcomm provide and release their own patches earlier, (iii) different AOSP versions receive security updates for different periods of time, (iv) for 94% of patched Android vulnerabilities, the date of disclosure in public datasets is not before the patch release date, (v) there exist some inconsistencies among public vulnerability data sources, e.g., some CVE IDs are listed in Android Security bulletins with detailed information, but in CVEDetails they are listed as unknown, (vi) many patched vulnerabilities for newer Android versions likely also affect older versions that do not receive security patches due to end-of-life.