ARM warns: GPUs in Mali are under attack – so patch immediately

A vulnerability in the ARM Bifrost and Valhall GPU kernel drivers is being exploited in the wild, the company warns.

The vulnerability is two years old and was patched in late 2022, but given the recent surge in abuse, ARM is urging its users to apply the patch immediately.

According to a published security bulletin, the vulnerability, designated CVE2024-4610, is described as use-after-free (UAF) and affects Bifrost and Valhall driver versions r34p0 through r40p0. A use-after-free vulnerability is a type of security vulnerability that occurs when a program continues to use a pointer to a memory location after it has been freed. In programming, when an object is no longer needed, its memory is usually deallocated (freed) so that it can be reused. If the program does not properly update or delete pointers to this memory, it may attempt to access or modify it after it has been freed.

Timing of the patch

Accordingly PiepComputerSuch a flaw can be used to steal confidential data from vulnerable devices or even to conduct arbitrary code execution attacks.

If you’re wondering how a two-year-old bug can have a 2024 label, you’re not the only one. PiepComputer has also reached out to ARM to demand an explanation, claiming that the company may have inadvertently patched the vulnerability and only discovered it now when hackers began exploiting it.

At the time of writing, ARM is not yet available on Windows PCs in any significant way, so the vulnerability mainly affects Android devices. Because the Android ecosystem is so fragmented, devices from different manufacturers may be patched at different times.

Additionally, since the vulnerability has been around for two years, there is a chance that some devices may not be patched at all. Users are advised to check with device manufacturers for more details.

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