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Security Advisory - Authentication Bypass Vulnerability in Some Huawei Smart Phones

  • SA No:huawei-sa-20180307-01-smartphone
  • Initial Release Date: 2018-03-07
  • Last Release Date: 2018-03-07

The soundtrigger module of some Huawei smart phones has an authentication bypass vulnerability due to the improper design of the module. An attacker tricks a user into installing a malicious application, and the application can exploit the vulnerability to replace related authentication information, which make the attacker can wake up the phone and control it to sent short messages and make call within audio range to the phone. (Vulnerability ID: HWPSIRT-2017-10093)
This vulnerability has been assigned a CVE ID: CVE-2017-17279.
Huawei has released software updates to fix this vulnerability. This advisory is available at the following link:
http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/security-advisories/huawei-sa-20180307-01-smartphone-en

Product Name

Affected Version

Resolved Product and Version

Mate 9 Pro

The versions before LON-AL00B 8.0.0.343(C00)

LON-AL00B 8.0.0.343(C00)


Successful exploit could make the attacker control the vulnerable phone to sent short messages and make call.
The vulnerability classification has been performed by using the CVSSv3 scoring system (http://www.first.org/cvss/specification-document).
Base Score: 6.1 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H)
Temporal Score: 5.7 (E:F/RL:O/RC:C)
This vulnerability can be exploited only when the following conditions are present:
1.The attacker has successfully tricked a user into installing the malicious application;
2.The attacker should located within the  audio range to the phone.
Vulnerability details:
The soundtrigger module of some Huawei smart phones has an authentication bypass vulnerability due to the improper design of the module. An attacker tricks a user into installing a malicious application, and the application can exploit the vulnerability to replace related authentication information, which make the attacker can wake up the phone and control it to sent short messages and make call within audio range to the phone.

The product that supports automatic update will receive a system update prompt. You can install the update to fix the vulnerability.

This vulnerability was discovered by Huawei internal tester.
2018-03-07 V1.0 INITIAL

Huawei adheres to protecting the ultimate interests of users with best efforts and the principle of responsible disclosure and deal with product security issues through our response mechanism.

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To report a security vulnerability in Huawei products and solutions, please send it to PSIRT@huawei.com. For details, please visit http://www.huawei.com/en/psirt/report-vulnerabilities.

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