What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-29256: Arm Mali GPU Kernel Driver Use-After-Free Vulnerability

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2023-07-07
• EPSS: 3.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2021-05-24 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-416

Description

. The Arm Mali GPU kernel driver allows an unprivileged user to achieve access to freed memory, leading to information disclosure or root privilege escalation. This affects Bifrost r16p0 through r29p0 before r30p0, Valhall r19p0 through r29p0 before r30p0, and Midgard r28p0 through r30p0.

Affected products

• Arm Ltd Bifrost GPU Kernel Driver: from r16p0 before r30p0 — fixed in r30p0
• Arm Ltd Midgard GPU Kernel Driver: from r28p0 before r31p0 — fixed in r31p0
• Arm Ltd Valhall GPU Kernel Driver: from r19p0 before r30p0 — fixed in r30p0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Arm Ltd Bifrost GPU Kernel Driver r30p0; Arm Ltd Midgard GPU Kernel Driver r31p0; Arm Ltd Valhall GPU Kernel Driver r30p0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://developer.arm.com/support/arm-security-updates/mali-gpu-kernel-driver
• https://developer.arm.com/support/arm-security-updates/mali-gpu-kernel-driver
• https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2021-29256

Get alerted when CVE-2021-29256 or the next vulnerability affects your stack