Sabrina Ellis, Director of Product Management at Google Inc., speaks during an event to introduce the Google Pixel phone and other Google products on October 4, 2016 in San Francisco, California. (Photo : Getty Images/ Ramin Talaie)
Google updated its security bulletin for March, which is composed of security patches for recently discovered vulnerabilities and factory OTA images for selected Nexus and Pixel models.
In the first week of March, Google has published its latest monthly Android security bulletin, alongside the new factory and OTA images for supported Nexus and Pixel devices. According to XDA Developers, the March security update includes fixes for 60 vulnerabilities, the severity levels of which range from critical to low.
In the March bulletin, Google wrote that the roster of vulnerabilities is already revealed to the partner OEMs in February. And for ease in fixing common vulnerabilities on the Android OS, Google prepared two different security patch levels in the March update, giving "Android partners with the flexibility to more quickly fix a subset of vulnerabilities that are similar across all Android devices."
One of the security patch level 2017-03-01 (partial) ensures that all vulnerabilities up to the 2017-03-01 date have been addressed, while security patch string 2016-03-05 (complete) indicates that all issues up to the 2017-03-05 date have been fixed.
According to WCCFTech, the March security patch also fixes one of the most severe security issues, which involves hackers to remotely execute malicious code by using multiple mediums on devices such as emails, browsers, and MMS media file.
However, the March security update pointed out that "supported Google devices will receive a single OTA update with the March 05, 2017 security patch level." As of this writing, the new update is being rolled out to Nexus and Pixel devices, which could be delivered in one single OTA update.
The following build numbers allowed for the March Android security update are NOF27B for the Pixel and Pixel XL (except for Rogers customers, who should get NOF27C), N4F26T for the Pixel C, Nexus 9, Nexus 5X, and Nexus 6P (except for Verizon customers, who get NUF26N), and N6F26U for the Nexus 6. There are no updated builds for the Nexus Player at this time.
In addition, the latest OTA binary image files for supported Nexus and Pixel devices can be downloaded on Google's website, along with the new factory images.
