CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-28663 — Arm Mali Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) Use-After-Free Vulnerability

High CVSS 9 CISA KEV

The Arm Mali GPU kernel driver allows privilege escalation or information disclosure because GPU memory operations are mishandled, leading to a use-after-free. This affects Bifrost r0p0 through r28p0 before r29p0, Valhall r19p0 through r28p0 before r29p0, and Midgard r4p0 through r30p0.

Severity
High
CVSS
9 (2.0)
Published
2021-05-10
CISA KEV
Known exploited
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-416

Affected products

  • arm / bifrost_gpu_kernel_driver
  • arm / midgard_gpu_kernel_driver
  • arm / valhall_gpu_kernel_driver

Matched remediation archetype

Use-after-free, double free, and expired resource use

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Trace ownership, references, callbacks, asynchronous tasks, and teardown paths around the affected object or resource.
  • Identify reachable inputs and timing or state transitions that can release the object while references remain.
  • Confirm affected builds, allocators, feature flags, architectures, and process privileges.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the maintained ownership or lifetime fix and rebuild all artifacts containing the affected native code.
  • Use explicit ownership, safe reference management, cancellation and join semantics, and idempotent teardown.
  • Add deterministic lifetime tests plus isolated sanitizer and concurrency coverage for shutdown and error paths.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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