CVE-2024-23355 in Snapdragon Auto
Summary
by MITRE • 08/05/2024
Memory corruption when keymaster operation imports a shared key.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/25/2026
The vulnerability described involves a critical memory corruption flaw within the Keymaster hardware abstraction layer or its underlying implementation, specifically triggered during the importation of a shared cryptographic key. In modern mobile and embedded systems, the Keymaster HAL serves as the secure interface between applications and the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) or Hardware Security Module (HSM). This component is responsible for generating, storing, and managing cryptographic keys in a manner that ensures their confidentiality and integrity against software-based attacks. When an application requests to import a shared key, such as one derived from Diffie-Hellman key exchange or provided by a remote service, the system must parse, validate, and securely store this material. The flaw arises during this parsing or storage phase, where improper handling of input data leads to memory corruption. This could manifest as a buffer overflow, heap corruption, or use-after-free condition, depending on how the shared key's length is validated against allocated buffers before being written into secure memory regions.
From a technical perspective, this defect represents a classic violation of safe memory management principles often categorized under CWE-120 Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input and CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write in the Common Weakness Enumeration framework. The root cause likely stems from insufficient validation of the shared key's size or structure before it is processed by lower-level cryptographic routines. If an attacker can control the content or length of the imported shared key, they may be able to write data beyond the boundaries of allocated memory structures within the Keymaster service process. This corruption does not necessarily result in immediate application crashes but rather creates a fragile state where subsequent operations on other keys or system resources may behave unpredictably. The severity is amplified by the fact that this occurs within a privileged security boundary, meaning successful exploitation could compromise the integrity of the entire key management infrastructure.
The operational impact of such a vulnerability extends far beyond simple denial of service. While an attacker might initially exploit this flaw to crash the Keymaster daemon or cause system instability, more sophisticated attacks could leverage memory corruption techniques like Return Oriented Programming (ROP) or arbitrary code execution within the context of the privileged security process. According to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, this aligns with T1055 Process Injection and potentially T1203 Exploitation for Credential Access if the attacker can manipulate key storage structures to extract sensitive material. Since Keymaster manages keys used for device encryption, secure boot verification, and application sandboxing, compromising its integrity allows an adversary to bypass security controls that rely on these cryptographic primitives. This could lead to unauthorized access to encrypted user data, manipulation of secure element operations, or the establishment of a persistent backdoor within the trusted execution environment.
Mitigation strategies must focus on both immediate patching and long-term architectural improvements. The primary remediation involves updating the Keymaster implementation to enforce strict bounds checking during all key import operations. Developers should implement rigorous input validation that verifies the length, format, and integrity of shared keys before they are processed by cryptographic libraries. Utilizing memory-safe programming languages or static analysis tools can help identify similar vulnerabilities in future code revisions. Furthermore, enabling hardware-enforced security features such as ARM TrustZone Memory Protection Unit (MPU) configurations ensures that even if a software flaw exists, it cannot corrupt critical memory regions outside its designated scope. Organizations should also conduct regular penetration testing focused on cryptographic interfaces and ensure that all devices running affected versions are updated to the latest firmware releases provided by manufacturers.