CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-39902 — Nxp Uboot Secondary Program Loader security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8

A software vulnerability has been identified in the U-Boot Secondary Program Loader (SPL) before 2023.07 on select NXP i.MX 8M family processors. Under certain conditions, a crafted Flattened Image Tree (FIT) format structure can be used to overwrite SPL memory, allowing unauthenticated software to execute on the target, leading to privilege escalation. This affects i.MX 8M, i.MX 8M Mini, i.MX 8M Nano, and i.MX 8M Plus.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.1)
Published
2023-10-17
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-281

Affected products

  • nxp / uboot_secondary_program_loader

Matched remediation archetype

Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management

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

Check exposure

  • Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
  • Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
  • Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
  • Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
  • Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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