CVE-2020-11311 in Snapdragon Auto
Summary
by MITRE • 11/25/2024
Child process can leak information from parent process due to numeric pids are getting compared and these pid can be reused in Snapdragon Auto, Snapdragon Compute, Snapdragon Connectivity, Snapdragon Consumer IOT, Snapdragon Industrial IOT, Snapdragon Mobile, Snapdragon Voice & Music, Snapdragon Wearables
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/08/2026
The vulnerability described involves a critical flaw in the inter-process communication mechanisms within Qualcomm's Snapdragon ecosystem platforms. Specifically, child processes are able to leak sensitive information from their parent processes due to an improper comparison of process identifiers. In many operating system environments and embedded Linux-based systems used in automotive, mobile, and IoT devices, process IDs or numeric handles are often reused after a process terminates. If the security logic relies solely on these numeric values without verifying that they correspond to the intended active instance rather than a newly spawned unrelated process, an attacker can exploit this race condition or state confusion. By manipulating the timing of process creation and termination, a malicious child process can trick the system into associating it with a different parent's context, thereby gaining unauthorized access to memory segments, configuration data, or authentication tokens belonging to that other parent process.
This type of flaw is fundamentally rooted in CWE-20: Improper Input Validation, specifically regarding the validation of entity relationships and identifiers. It also aligns closely with CWE-367: Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) race conditions if the vulnerability arises from a gap between checking the parent-child relationship and acting upon it. Furthermore, this behavior facilitates unauthorized information disclosure which is categorized under CWE-200: Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor. The core technical issue lies in the failure to enforce strict identity binding or context isolation when handling numeric identifiers that are subject to recycling by the kernel's process scheduler. Without robust checks such as verifying file descriptor ownership, using unique non-reusable tokens for IPC, or implementing mandatory access controls like SELinux policies strictly scoped to specific process trees, the system remains vulnerable to cross-process data leakage.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe across all affected Snapdragon platforms including Auto, Compute, Connectivity, Consumer IoT, Industrial IoT, Mobile, Voice & Music, and Wearables. In automotive contexts such as Snapdragon Auto, leaking information from a parent process could expose vehicle control parameters, diagnostic logs, or user privacy data to malicious applications running in the same sandboxed environment. For mobile devices like those using Snapdragon Mobile platforms, this could lead to the theft of session tokens, private keys, or personal identifiable information stored by system services. In industrial and consumer IoT scenarios, where security boundaries are often less rigorous than on high-end smartphones, such leaks can compromise device integrity, allowing attackers to manipulate connected hardware or exfiltrate network credentials. The widespread nature of this flaw across multiple product lines indicates a systemic architectural weakness in how these platforms handle process hierarchy verification during inter-process communication setup.
Mitigation strategies must focus on strengthening identity verification and enforcing strict isolation boundaries. Developers should avoid relying solely on numeric PIDs for security decisions, as these are ephemeral and recyclable. Instead, the system should utilize more robust identifiers such as file descriptors with appropriate permissions checks or unique cryptographic tokens generated at process creation that persist only for the lifetime of the specific parent-child relationship. Implementing Mandatory Access Control (MAC) frameworks like SELinux can help by defining policies that explicitly restrict which processes are allowed to communicate and what data they can access, regardless of PID reuse. Additionally, adopting secure IPC mechanisms that include context validation ensures that a child process cannot impersonate or inherit privileges from an unrelated parent. Regular code audits focusing on race conditions in process management logic and unit testing for TOCTOU vulnerabilities are essential steps to remediate this class of defects across the Snapdragon portfolio.