Bypass of application specific PIN

Apr 7, 2016

Description

The ownCloud Android application does support setting a PIN that has to be provided before the application can be opened. An attacker may remove the PIN by clearing the application data via the Android system settings. By doing that the application information would be removed while the authentication information would still stay on the system.

Thus an adversary with local access could bypass the PIN functionality. One should note that physical access often implies a high risk and encrypting the device as well as setting an additional PIN code on the device is highly recommended.

Affected Software

  • ownCloud Mobile < Android 1.9.1 (CVE assignment pending)

Action Taken

The passcode will also be required by the application after removing the application data.

Acknowledgements

The ownCloud team thanks the following people for their research and responsible disclosure of the above advisory:

  • Christian Schuerer-Waldheim – Vulnerability discovery and disclosure.