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Mallory
Medium

GPS XTRA File MITM DoS in Android (CVE-2016-5341)

IdentifiersCVE-2016-5341CWE-300

A vulnerability in the GPS component of Android prior to the 2016-12-05 security patch allows a man-in-the-middle attacker to provide a malicious xtra.bin or xtra2.bin file from a spoofed Qualcomm gpsonextra.net or izatcloud.net host. This can delay GPS signal acquisition, resulting in a denial of service condition. The vulnerability is tracked as internal bug 31470303, external bug 211602, and AndroidID-7225554.

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For your environment

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation allows an attacker in a privileged network position to delay GPS signal acquisition on affected Android devices, causing a denial of service for location-based services. This can disrupt navigation, location tracking, and any application relying on timely GPS data.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

Restrict network access to trusted sources, monitor for DNS or network spoofing attempts, and ensure devices are updated to a patched version of Android. Network-level protections such as DNSSEC and HTTPS for XTRA file downloads can also reduce risk.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Apply the Android security update released on 2016-12-05 or later, which addresses this vulnerability by validating the authenticity of the XTRA files and their source.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

No public exploits tracked yet. Mallory keeps watching.

VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
GoogleAndroidoperating_system

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

The version that knows your environment.

This page is what’s public. Mallory adds the parts that aren’t: which of your assets are affected, which adversaries are exploiting it right now, which detections to deploy, and what to do tonight.
Exposure mapping

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Threat actor evidence

Every observed campaign linking this CVE to a named adversary.

Associated malware

Malware families riding this exploit, with evidence and IOCs.

Detection signatures

YARA, Sigma, Snort, and vendor rules, auto-deployed to your SIEM.

Vendor-by-vendor mapping

Cross-references every affected SKU, including bundled OEM variants.

Social activity

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