CVE-2025-21476 in Snapdragon Consumer IOT
Summary
by MITRE • 09/24/2025
Memory corruption when passing parameters to the Trusted Virtual Machine during the handshake.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/24/2025
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2025-21476 represents a critical memory corruption issue that occurs during the Trusted Virtual Machine handshake process when parameters are being passed between components. This flaw resides in the secure communication protocols that govern how virtual machines establish trusted connections with their host environments, making it particularly dangerous in virtualized security contexts. The memory corruption manifests when the system attempts to validate and process parameters during the initial handshake phase, creating potential attack vectors that could compromise the integrity of the entire virtualization infrastructure. Such vulnerabilities are particularly concerning because they can undermine the fundamental security guarantees that virtual machines are designed to provide, potentially allowing attackers to escalate privileges or bypass security controls.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from inadequate parameter validation and memory management during the handshake protocol execution. When the Trusted Virtual Machine receives parameter inputs from the host system, the validation mechanisms fail to properly handle malformed or unexpected data structures, leading to buffer overflows or memory corruption patterns that can be exploited by malicious actors. This type of flaw typically aligns with CWE-121, which describes unsafe array indexing conditions, and CWE-122, which addresses insufficient memory allocation checks during parameter handling. The vulnerability operates at a low level within the virtualization stack where memory management and parameter passing are critical to maintaining secure communication channels between virtualized components.
The operational impact of CVE-2025-21476 extends beyond simple memory corruption, potentially enabling attackers to execute arbitrary code within the virtual environment or manipulate the trusted execution context. An attacker who successfully exploits this vulnerability could gain unauthorized access to sensitive data stored within virtual machines, compromise the integrity of the hypervisor, or establish persistent backdoors within the virtualized infrastructure. This vulnerability directly impacts the security posture of organizations relying on virtualization technologies, as it undermines the isolation guarantees that virtual machines are designed to maintain. The exploitation of such memory corruption flaws can lead to complete system compromise, making it a critical concern for enterprise environments, cloud providers, and any organization utilizing virtualized security solutions.
Mitigation strategies for CVE-2025-21476 should prioritize immediate patch deployment from vendors who have released updates addressing the specific memory handling issues during the handshake process. Organizations should implement network segmentation and access controls to limit potential attack vectors targeting virtualization infrastructure, while also monitoring for unusual network traffic patterns that might indicate exploitation attempts. The remediation process should include comprehensive testing of patched systems to ensure that the memory corruption handling has been properly addressed without introducing regressions in functionality. Security teams should also consider implementing additional monitoring for anomalous parameter passing behaviors and establish incident response procedures specifically tailored to virtualization security incidents. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to techniques involving privilege escalation and defense evasion, as attackers could leverage the memory corruption to bypass security controls and maintain persistent access within virtualized environments.