CVE-2026-123011 in st-mems-android-linux-sensors-hal
Summary
by MITRE • 11/05/2026
STMicroelectronics st-mems-android-linux-sensors-hal before 7bdf334 does not check whether the allowed number of channels is exceeded.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/05/2026
The vulnerability identified in STMicroelectronics' st-mems-android-linux-sensors HAL prior to commit 7bdf334 represents a critical input validation failure within the hardware abstraction layer responsible for managing sensor data streams on Android-based devices utilizing STM32 microcontrollers or similar MEMS sensors. This component serves as the bridge between the Linux kernel driver space and the Android framework, translating raw sensor readings into formats consumable by higher-level applications such as fitness trackers, augmented reality platforms, and navigation systems. The specific flaw lies in the absence of a bounds check when configuring the number of active data channels for these sensors. In typical operation, multiple sensors or different modes of a single multi-axis sensor may be activated simultaneously to provide comprehensive environmental or motion data. However, without proper validation, the system allows an application or malicious actor to request more channels than the underlying hardware buffer or driver structure can safely accommodate.
From a technical perspective, this oversight constitutes a classic case of improper input validation leading to potential memory corruption issues. When the number of requested channels exceeds the predefined limit allocated by the HAL for internal data structures, it may result in a heap-based buffer overflow or stack exhaustion depending on how the channel descriptors are stored and processed. This type of flaw is directly aligned with CWE-120 Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input Classic Buffer Overflow and CWE-20 Improper Input Validation. The lack of enforcement means that subsequent operations attempting to write data into these channels will overwrite adjacent memory regions, potentially corrupting critical control structures such as function pointers or return addresses within the HAL process space.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe due to its location in a privileged system service context. Since sensor HALs typically run with elevated privileges to ensure low-latency access to hardware registers and direct kernel interactions, exploiting this flaw could allow an attacker to achieve arbitrary code execution on the device. An adversary could craft a malicious application that triggers excessive channel allocation during initialization or runtime reconfiguration phases. By carefully crafting the payload within the overflowed buffer, it is possible to hijack control flow and execute shellcode with the permissions of the sensor service process. This aligns with ATT&CK technique T1055 Process Injection and potentially T1203 Exploitation for Client Execution if combined with social engineering vectors targeting users who install untrusted applications that interact heavily with motion or environmental sensors.
Furthermore, beyond direct code execution, this vulnerability can lead to denial of service conditions where the sensor subsystem crashes due to memory corruption, causing instability in dependent applications and potentially requiring a device reboot. In safety-critical contexts such as automotive infotainment systems or industrial IoT devices relying on STM32-based controllers for monitoring physical parameters, such instability could have broader systemic consequences including loss of telemetry data or failure of automated responses triggered by sensor inputs.
Mitigation strategies must focus primarily on updating the st-mems-android-linux-sensors HAL to version 7bdf334 or later where this validation logic has been implemented. Device manufacturers and OEMs should prioritize patching their firmware images to include this fix, ensuring that all supported devices receive the updated binary libraries. For developers integrating these sensors into custom Android builds, it is imperative to enforce strict limits on channel configuration requests at both the HAL level and within any intermediate middleware layers. Implementing defensive programming practices such as explicit bounds checking before allocating resources or accessing arrays will prevent exploitation of similar flaws in other components. Additionally, enabling runtime application sandboxing through Android's permission model can limit the blast radius if an exploit is attempted by restricting which applications have access to sensitive sensor data streams.