You need to be a fake cell tower to crash one phone's radio for as long as it stays in range
This is a MediaTek baseband bug (Patch ID MOLY01816800, Issue MSV-6842) in the modem's handling of malformed over-the-air signaling. A UE that camps on an attacker-controlled base station and receives a crafted message crashes the modem — the phone drops the cellular link until it reboots or re-attaches. Affected products span MediaTek's mobile chipset families shipped in Android handsets and IoT/CPE modems; MediaTek's July 2026 security bulletin is the canonical list. CWE is classified as 288 (auth bypass via alternate path) in NVD, but the practical primitive is improper input validation leading to DoS, not code execution or persistent auth compromise.
There is no vendor CVSS baseline for this CVE, so noisgate is establishing the first assessment. The impact ceiling is denial of service on a single handset within RF range of a rogue eNB/gNB — no RCE, no privilege escalation, no data disclosure documented, no lateral movement, no persistence past re-attach. Real-world severity is LOW: the exploit prerequisite (a rogue base station within physical proximity of a targeted device) is the same barrier that gates every Stingray-class attack, and the payoff is only a reboot.
4 steps from start to impact.
Stand up a rogue base station
- SDR + amplifier hardware
- software radio stack (srsRAN/OAI)
- physical proximity to target
- willingness to violate spectrum regulations
- hardware cost $2k-$50k
- detection by carrier RF monitoring and Android's
NetworkNotifyType.CELLULAR_SUSPICIOUS_NETWORK - target device may prefer 5G-SA and refuse to camp on a rogue 4G/LTE cell
Coerce target UE to camp
- target UE within RF range
- rogue cell signal dominant
- target not locked to 5G-SA-only mode
- modern UEs pin to home PLMN when possible
- corporate MDM can disable 2G/3G fallback
- target moves out of range
Send crafted signaling message
MOLY01816800). Public PoC does not exist; researcher would need to fuzz the MediaTek baseband — tooling analogs include LTEFuzz, BaseSpec, and FirmWire.- knowledge of the exact malformed field(s)
- ability to encode and transmit the frame post-attach
- baseband internals are closed-source
- no public PoC or exploit primitive released
Modem crash — DoS
- successful delivery of malformed frame
- automatic modem reset on many MediaTek platforms restores service in seconds
setCellularTwoGDisabled, iOS Lockdown-equivalents). Removes the easiest downgrade path an IMSI-catcher uses to force camp. Deploy alongside the next MDM policy push.- VPN / MDM tunnel enforcement — the crash happens at Layer 1/2 of the cellular stack before any IP traffic exists. VPN cannot intercept baseband signaling.
- Network firewall / IDS / WAF — none of these touch the RF air interface.
- MFA / phishing training — attack requires no user interaction and no credential.
- Airplane mode as a mitigation — technically prevents attach, but also disables the device's primary function. Not a real control.
The supporting signals.
| In-the-wild exploitation | None observed. No campaigns, no threat-actor attribution, no incident reports as of 2026-07-01. |
|---|---|
| Public PoC | None. No GitHub repo, no Metasploit module, no writeup. Baseband fuzzers (LTEFuzz, BaseSpec, FirmWire) could theoretically reproduce. |
| EPSS | Not yet scored (freshly disclosed 2026-07-01). Expect <1st percentile — DoS + physical-proximity precondition. |
| KEV status | Not listed. Unlikely to be added — no RCE, no privilege escalation, no ransomware relevance. |
| CVSS | No vendor score. noisgate assesses ~3.8 (AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L) — adjacent RF, high complexity, availability-only, single-device scope. |
| Affected | MediaTek modem software across chipset families listed in MediaTek's July 2026 Product Security Bulletin. Patch ID MOLY01816800, Issue MSV-6842. |
| Fixed versions | MediaTek MOLY baseband builds carrying MOLY01816800. OEM firmware SPLs from Samsung/Xiaomi/Oppo/Vivo dated 2026-07-05 or later. |
| Exposure telemetry | Not internet-reachable — RF-only vector. Shodan/Censys/GreyNoise irrelevant. Exposure = installed base of vulnerable chipsets on hosts physically reachable by a rogue cell. |
| Disclosed | 2026-07-01 in MediaTek's monthly bulletin, coordinated with Android Security Bulletin cycle. |
| Reporter | Credited to MediaTek internal security research (per bulletin format); no external researcher named. |
Sources.
- OffSeq Threat Radar — CVE-2026-20459
- MediaTek Product Security Bulletin (July 2026)
- Android Security Bulletin — July 2026
- NVD — CVE-2026-20459
- MITRE CVE Record — CVE-2026-20459
- CWE-288 — Authentication Bypass Using an Alternate Path or Channel
- srsRAN Project (rogue-cell tooling context)
- BaseSpec / FirmWire baseband fuzzing research
Why this verdict
- No vendor baseline — establishing first assessment. Neither NVD nor MediaTek published a CVSS score; noisgate scores ~3.8 based on the documented primitive.
- Attack vector is Adjacent (RF), not Network. Exploitation requires a rogue base station within antenna range of the victim UE — this is Stingray-class tradecraft, not internet-reachable.
- Impact is availability-only, single device. No RCE, no privilege escalation, no data disclosure, no persistence past modem reset. Vendor description explicitly says *system crash* / *remote DoS*.
- Role multiplier: consumer handset (typical role). Chain succeeds → one phone loses signal until reboot. Blast radius: local, single-device. No fleet impact.
- Role multiplier: IoT/CPE/M2M modem in a fleet (high-value role). Chain succeeds → attacker with an RF footprint over a warehouse or industrial site could brown-out cellular-connected sensors within that footprint. Blast radius still bounded to RF coverage; no lateral movement, no data compromise. Does not cross the HIGH floor — no domain, identity, hypervisor, or supply-chain surface is touched.
- No KEV, no PoC, no EPSS traction. Zero indicators of imminent operational risk.
Why not higher?
MEDIUM/HIGH would require either an internet-reachable vector, code execution, or persistent impact — none are present. The rogue-base-station prerequisite alone caps this well below MEDIUM for any threat model that isn't a targeted-surveillance operation against a specific individual.
Why not lower?
IGNORE would require the bug to be non-exploitable in practice or the affected footprint to be negligible. MediaTek chipsets ship in hundreds of millions of Android handsets and IoT devices, and journalists, executives, and dissidents genuinely are targeted by IMSI-catchers — a documented DoS primitive is a real (if narrow) tool in that playbook.
Crowdsourced verification payload.
Run this on an auditor workstation with Android Debug Bridge (adb) in PATH and a target Android device connected via USB with USB debugging enabled. Invoke as .\Check-CVE-2026-20459.ps1 -SerialNumber <adb-device-id>. No elevated privileges required; the script reads ro.build.version.security_patch and the modem baseband version.
#!/usr/bin/env pwsh
# Check-CVE-2026-20459.ps1
# Detects whether an attached Android device carries the July 2026 SPL that
# includes MediaTek Patch ID MOLY01816800 (CVE-2026-20459).
#
# Exit codes: 0 = PATCHED, 1 = VULNERABLE, 2 = UNKNOWN
param(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$true)]
[string]$SerialNumber
)
$ErrorActionPreference = 'Stop'
function Invoke-Adb {
param([string]$Cmd)
return (& adb -s $SerialNumber shell $Cmd 2>$null).Trim()
}
try {
$spl = Invoke-Adb 'getprop ro.build.version.security_patch'
$baseband = Invoke-Adb 'getprop gsm.version.baseband'
$chipset = Invoke-Adb 'getprop ro.hardware'
$vendor = Invoke-Adb 'getprop ro.vendor.mediatek.platform'
} catch {
Write-Output 'UNKNOWN: adb query failed'
exit 2
}
Write-Output "Device : $SerialNumber"
Write-Output "Chipset : $chipset"
Write-Output "MTK platform: $vendor"
Write-Output "Baseband : $baseband"
Write-Output "SPL : $spl"
# Only MediaTek-based devices are in scope
$isMtk = ($chipset -match 'mt[0-9]{4}') -or ($vendor -ne '')
if (-not $isMtk) {
Write-Output 'PATCHED (not MediaTek — CVE-2026-20459 not applicable)'
exit 0
}
# Fix rides Android Security Bulletin 2026-07-05
try {
$splDate = [datetime]::ParseExact($spl, 'yyyy-MM-dd', $null)
} catch {
Write-Output 'UNKNOWN: could not parse SPL'
exit 2
}
$fixed = [datetime]'2026-07-05'
if ($splDate -ge $fixed) {
Write-Output 'PATCHED'
exit 0
} else {
Write-Output 'VULNERABLE — SPL predates 2026-07-05; MOLY01816800 not present'
exit 1
}