CVE-2026-90890 in Polychrome SYNC RGB for MB RGB for VGA
Summary
by MITRE • 09/14/2026
ASRock Polychrome SYNC/RGB software utility developed by ASRock Inc. has an Untrusted Pointer Dereference vulnerability. Authenticated local attackers can send a specially crafted IOCTL request to cause the driver to dereference an unvalidated pointer, resulting in an operating system crash.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 09/14/2026
The vulnerability identified within the ASRock Polychrome SYNC and RGB software utility represents a critical flaw rooted in improper input validation during device control operations. This specific issue is classified as an Untrusted Pointer Dereference, which falls under the broader category of CWE-94 Improper Control of Generation of Code (Code Injection) or more specifically CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write if it leads to memory corruption, though in this context, it primarily manifests as a denial of service through system instability. The core technical flaw lies within the kernel-mode driver associated with the utility, which fails to adequately validate pointers passed via Input/Output Control (IOCTL) requests before dereferencing them. In Windows operating systems, IOCTL interfaces serve as the primary communication channel between user-space applications and kernel-space drivers. When an application sends a request to control hardware features such as RGB lighting synchronization, it passes data structures that may include memory addresses or pointers intended for driver processing. The vulnerability arises because the ASRock driver does not rigorously check whether these pointers are valid, accessible, and properly aligned within the current process context before attempting to read from or write to them.
Authenticated local attackers can exploit this weakness by crafting a malicious IOCTL request that supplies an invalid or arbitrary memory address as part of the input buffer. Because the attacker has authentication privileges on the system, they bypass initial access controls but fail to trigger privilege escalation directly through this vector alone; instead, the exploitation focuses on destabilizing the operating environment. When the driver attempts to dereference the unvalidated pointer provided by the crafted request, it accesses memory locations that are either unmapped or protected. This illegal memory access triggers a page fault exception within the kernel mode execution context. Since Windows drivers operate at Ring 0 with high privileges and limited error handling capabilities for such faults, the operating system cannot gracefully recover from this specific type of invalid pointer dereference. Consequently, the kernel encounters an unrecoverable error, leading to a stop error or blue screen of death (BSOD). This results in an immediate crash of the entire operating system, effectively causing a Denial of Service condition for all users and processes running on the affected machine.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability allows any local user with valid credentials to disrupt service availability without requiring physical access or remote network connectivity. The attacker does not need elevated privileges beyond standard user accounts, making it accessible to a wide range of potential threat actors within an organization or home environment where shared computing resources exist. While the primary outcome is system instability and data loss due to unsaved work during crashes, such vulnerabilities can sometimes serve as precursors to more severe attacks if combined with other flaws in memory management routines that might allow for arbitrary code execution through heap corruption techniques following the initial crash state. However, based on the current description, the impact remains focused on availability rather than confidentiality or integrity of data at rest.
To mitigate this risk, ASRock Inc. should release a firmware and software update that patches the driver by implementing strict validation checks before any pointer dereference occurs. This includes verifying that pointers are within valid user-mode address space boundaries using functions like MmIsAddressValid or equivalent kernel APIs to ensure safe access. Additionally, input buffers received via IOCTL requests must be thoroughly sanitized and bounds-checked to prevent out-of-bounds reads or writes. System administrators can temporarily mitigate the risk by disabling the ASRock Polychrome SYNC service if it is not actively required for hardware functionality, thereby removing the attack surface from local users. Furthermore, ensuring that all system patches are up-to-date may provide additional layers of protection against exploitation techniques derived from this underlying driver flaw. Industry standards such as MITRE ATT&CK T1053 Scheduled Task/Job or T1074 Data Staged might be loosely related if the crash is used to facilitate further malicious activity, but the primary classification aligns with CWE-94 and CWE-20 Improper Input Validation regarding the handling of external inputs in system components.