CVE-2021-1938 in Snapdragon Auto
Summary
by MITRE • 07/13/2021
Possible assertion due to improper verification while creating and deleting the peer in Snapdragon Auto, Snapdragon Compute, Snapdragon Connectivity, Snapdragon Consumer Electronics Connectivity, Snapdragon Consumer IOT, Snapdragon Industrial IOT, Snapdragon Mobile, Snapdragon Voice & Music, Snapdragon Wired Infrastructure and Networking
Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 07/16/2021
This vulnerability resides in the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset family across multiple product lines including automotive, mobile, compute, and networking solutions. The issue manifests as an assertion failure occurring during peer creation and deletion operations within the network stack components. The root cause stems from inadequate validation mechanisms that fail to properly verify peer state transitions and resource management during connection lifecycle operations. This assertion failure represents a critical reliability issue that can lead to system instability and potential service disruption.
The technical flaw specifically involves improper verification logic within the peer management subsystem where the system does not adequately validate peer existence, state, or resource allocation before proceeding with creation or deletion operations. This validation gap creates opportunities for race conditions and inconsistent state management that can trigger kernel assertions and system crashes. The vulnerability affects the underlying network protocols and peer-to-peer communication mechanisms that are fundamental to device connectivity and data exchange operations across all affected Snapdragon product categories.
Operationally, this vulnerability can result in denial of service conditions where devices may become unresponsive or require manual reboot to recover from the assertion failure. In automotive applications, this could lead to critical communication failures between vehicle systems and external networks. The impact extends to mobile devices where persistent connection issues may occur during network handoffs or peer discovery processes. The vulnerability's exploitation potential increases when multiple peer operations occur concurrently, amplifying the likelihood of system instability and service degradation.
Mitigation strategies should focus on implementing comprehensive peer state validation before any peer creation or deletion operations. System administrators should ensure firmware updates are applied to address the underlying validation logic issues. Network administrators should monitor for unusual peer connection patterns that may indicate the vulnerability's exploitation. The fix typically involves strengthening input validation, implementing proper state machine checks, and adding robust error handling mechanisms. This vulnerability aligns with CWE-248 and CWE-691 categories related to improper exception handling and insufficient control flow management. From an ATT&CK perspective, this represents a system stability compromise that could enable further exploitation or provide an entry point for more sophisticated attacks targeting the device's network stack and communication protocols.