CVE-2026-10420 in mTower
Summary
by MITRE • 09/01/2026
Untrusted pointer dereference vulnerability in Samsung Open Source mTower allows Pointer Manipulation.
This issue affects mTower: before 102d3dc75cf8e58e68e4bea54ae3c803992c91be.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/01/2026
The vulnerability identified in the Samsung Open Source mTower component represents a critical untrusted pointer dereference flaw that enables arbitrary memory manipulation through improper validation of external inputs. This type of defect typically arises when software fails to verify whether a pointer value retrieved from an untrusted source, such as user input or network data, is valid and points to accessible memory regions before attempting to read from or write to the address it references. In the context of mTower, which serves as a management interface for IoT devices, this flaw allows attackers to craft malicious payloads that supply invalid or carefully crafted pointer values. When the application processes these inputs without adequate bounds checking or type validation, the underlying code attempts to dereference the untrusted pointer, leading to undefined behavior within the operating system's memory space.
From a technical perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-119 Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer and more specifically CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference or CWE-825 Expired Pointer Dereference depending on whether the pointer is null or points to freed memory. The core issue lies in the lack of rigorous input sanitization at the application layer before passing data down to lower-level system calls or internal functions that handle memory allocation and access. By manipulating these pointers, an attacker can potentially cause a denial of service by crashing the mTower process due to segmentation faults, which disrupts device management operations. More severely, if the vulnerability allows for controlled overwrites adjacent to critical data structures in memory, it may facilitate code execution attacks where malicious instructions are injected into the process space, leading to full system compromise.
The operational impact of this flaw is significant given the role mTower plays in managing connected devices within smart home and enterprise IoT ecosystems. A successful exploitation could allow a remote attacker to disrupt service availability by causing repeated crashes or hangs in the management server, effectively rendering the IoT infrastructure unmanageable. Furthermore, if the vulnerability permits arbitrary read operations, sensitive configuration data, credentials stored in memory, or network topology information could be exfiltrated. In scenarios where write primitives are achievable through pointer manipulation, an attacker might escalate privileges to gain root access on the host system running mTower, thereby compromising not only the management interface but potentially all devices connected to it via compromised control commands.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability primarily involve applying the specific patch identified by commit hash 102d3dc75cf8e58e68e4bea54ae3c803992c91be, which addresses the root cause by implementing proper validation checks before pointer dereference operations. Developers should enforce strict input validation to ensure that all pointers originate from trusted sources or have been verified against valid memory ranges using tools like AddressSanitizer during development and testing phases. Additionally, deploying runtime protection mechanisms such as stack canaries, Data Execution Prevention (DEP), and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) can mitigate the exploitability of this vulnerability by making it more difficult for attackers to predict memory layouts or execute injected code. Network-level controls should also be implemented to restrict access to mTower interfaces from untrusted networks, reducing the attack surface available to potential adversaries seeking to leverage this flaw according to MITRE ATT&CK techniques related to initial access and privilege escalation.