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1h ago

Invisible 'SMS of Death' Can Put Android Phones Into Reboot Loop

Google has added a patch for Android 14–17 to AOSP, leaving device makers and carriers to deliver fixes to most phones.

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Eine manipulierte WAP-Push-Nachricht lässt Smartphones ohne Zutun neu starten.
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Overview

  • Researcher Mark Blaszczyk published details on Thursday about a zero-click WAP‑Push bug that can make Android 12–17 phones repeatedly reboot and show a recovery prompt.
  • The flaw comes from an unchecked typecast in WAP header processing that creates a negative array size and throws a NegativeArraySizeException, crashing the telephony service process com.android.phone.
  • Blaszczyk reliably reproduced the bug on Pixel and Samsung devices and showed that the crash can interrupt active calls, including emergency calls, and that carrier re-delivery of the hidden message can prolong outages.
  • Google supplied fixes for Android 14–17 into AOSP and GrapheneOS applied early mitigations, but most users must wait for their device maker or carrier to roll out the patch and phones still on Android 12 or 13 are likely to remain vulnerable.
  • Affected users should not choose 'Wipe data' in recovery and should instead seek help to recover via a PC and Android Debug Bridge or professional service to avoid permanent data loss.