GhostMap Android flaw lets malicious app trigger persistent boot loop

To cause the persistent denial-of-service (DoS), the app triggers a vulnerability that researchers dubbed 'GhostMap' that makes Android map a file into an unallocated memory region. The affected process crashes when it attempts to read from that region.

Romanian cybersecurity company Bitdefender discovered the flaw while analyzing an Android banking trojan that kept crashing its emulators when it tried to read an application resource. The researchers showed the vulnerability by creating an app that contains no executable code, requests no permissions on installation, and does not need to be rolled out on the device. According to the company, Google has been aware of GhostMap since August but closed the issue without releasing a patch, classifying it as "not reproducible."

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