CVE-2023-21237 — Android
MEDIUMCVE-2023-21237 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.5) Information Exposure vulnerability in google android. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2024-03-05) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
In applyRemoteView of NotificationContentInflater.java, there is a possible way to hide foreground service notification due to misleading or insufficient UI. This could lead to local…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2024-03-05. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2024-03-26.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2023-21237.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2023-21237 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
In applyRemoteView of NotificationContentInflater.java, there is a possible way to hide foreground service notification due to misleading or insufficient UI. This could lead to local information disclosure with no additional execution privileges needed. User interaction is not needed for exploitation.Product: AndroidVersions: Android-13Android ID: A-251586912
Affected Products
androidgoogleResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Vendor / applianceDetect
Inventory every google android deployment and check each version against the affected-products list above.
Remediation status
No patch has shipped for CVE-2023-21237 yet — track the google android advisory for a fixed release and apply the workarounds below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them. Alongside that, restrict the management interface to trusted networks and apply the vendor's recommended configuration mitigations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-21237 being exploited in your environment?
Detect and block the exploit chain at execution, on systems you cannot patch yet.