CVE-2026-68984 in Exynos 2100
Summary
by MITRE • 11/05/2026
In the Samsung Exynos NPU kernel driver, an integer overflow allows an unprivileged application to trigger memory corruption.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/05/2026
The vulnerability resides within the Neural Processing Unit or NPU kernel driver associated with Samsung's Exynos system-on-chip architecture. This component is responsible for managing hardware acceleration tasks related to machine learning and artificial intelligence workloads, which are increasingly prevalent in modern mobile devices. The core technical flaw involves an integer overflow condition during the calculation of memory allocation sizes or buffer boundaries within the driver code. When processing input data from user-space applications, the driver fails to properly validate arithmetic operations before allocating kernel memory. Specifically, if a malicious actor supplies crafted parameters that result in a value exceeding the maximum limit for signed integers, the resulting size wraps around to a small positive number rather than triggering an appropriate error or allocation failure.
This integer overflow directly leads to heap-based buffer corruption within the kernel space. Because the driver allocates memory based on the truncated, incorrect size but subsequently writes data according to the original, larger intended dimensions, it overwrites adjacent memory regions in the kernel heap. This out-of-bounds write operation corrupts critical kernel data structures, including potentially function pointers or object headers used by the memory allocator. The presence of this flaw allows an unprivileged application, which typically has restricted access rights, to manipulate low-level system resources without proper authorization checks.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe due to its potential for privilege escalation. By carefully crafting the payload and exploiting the heap corruption, an attacker can achieve arbitrary code execution within the kernel context. This effectively bypasses standard security boundaries such as SELinux policies or Android sandboxing mechanisms that rely on user-space isolation. Once kernel-level access is obtained, the adversary gains full control over the device, enabling them to exfiltrate sensitive personal data, install persistent malware, disable security features like encryption, and potentially compromise other applications running on the same system through shared memory regions or inter-process communication channels.
From a classification perspective, this issue aligns with CWE-190 Integer Overflow or Wraparound, which describes errors where arithmetic operations exceed the capacity of the data type used to store them. Furthermore, the exploitation path corresponds to ATT&CK technique T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation, as it leverages a software flaw to gain higher-level permissions on an operating system. The vulnerability also touches upon CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write, given that the overflow results in writing beyond allocated buffer limits.
Mitigation strategies primarily involve patching the specific kernel driver code responsible for handling NPU-related ioctls or memory allocations. Developers must implement rigorous input validation to ensure that all size calculations are checked against maximum allowable bounds before proceeding with memory allocation functions such as kmalloc or vmalloc. Additionally, enabling compiler-based security features like stack canaries and hardening techniques in the kernel build configuration can help detect some forms of corruption at runtime. For end-users, applying the latest available firmware updates from Samsung is critical to ensure that vendor-provided patches for this driver are installed. System administrators should also monitor for unusual memory usage patterns or privilege escalation attempts within logs as a defensive measure until the patch is deployed.