CVE-2020-10841

Vulnerability

An arbitrary kfree vulnerability exists in the vipx and vertex drivers on Samsung mobile devices with Exynos 9610 chipsets. The issue affects devices running Android P(9.0) and Q(10.0) software. The Samsung ID for this issue is SVE-2019-16294 (February 2020) [1]. The vulnerability allows an attacker to trigger a kernel free operation on an arbitrary address.

Exploitation

To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker requires local access to the device and the ability to interact with the affected drivers. The specific sequence of steps is not disclosed in the available references [1]. However, the arbitrary kfree nature suggests that an attacker could craft input to the vipx or vertex drivers to trigger freeing of kernel memory at an attacker-controlled address.

Impact

Successful exploitation could lead to a denial of service (system crash) or potentially allow an attacker to corrupt kernel memory, which might be further leveraged for privilege escalation. The impact is thus primarily availability and integrity of the system [1].

Mitigation

Samsung has not publicly disclosed a specific fix or patched version for this vulnerability in the available references [1]. Users should ensure their devices receive the latest Samsung security updates, which may include a fix for SVE-2019-16294. No workaround is documented.