Description

Untrusted pointer dereference vulnerability in Samsung Open Source mTower allows Pointer Manipulation. This issue affects mTower: before 102d3dc75cf8e58e68e4bea54ae3c803992c91be.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "5.5",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-01T12:17:34.687Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-01T12:17:34.687Z",
  "executiveSummary": "An untrusted pointer dereference vulnerability exists within the Samsung mTower open-source project, stemming from improper validation of pointers provided by external entities.\nThe vulnerability allows for arbitrary pointer manipulation, potentially leading to unauthorized memory access, information disclosure, or execution of arbitrary code within the mTower runtime environment.\nThis issue affects all versions of mTower prior to the commit identified by hash 102d3dc75cf8e58e68e4bea54ae3c803992c91be.\nThe risk is severe as mTower is often utilized in Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) contexts, where compromising the security of the TEE can undermine the security guarantees of the entire platform.\nSuccessful exploitation requires the attacker to influence the pointer data processed by the vulnerable component; the exact requirements for interaction depend on the specific interface exposing the vulnerability, but typically involve interaction with the TEE or a privileged service within the mTower architecture.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability is characterized as an untrusted pointer dereference, a class of memory safety flaw where an application utilizes a memory address provided by an external or untrusted source without performing necessary boundary or integrity validation.\nIn the context of the Samsung mTower architecture, this flaw occurs when a component responsible for processing requests—likely handling IPC (Inter-Process Communication) or system calls between the untrusted world and the secure world—accepts a pointer address from an untrusted entity without validating that the address resides within a permissible, trusted memory region.\nThe root cause is an inadequate implementation of sanitization or pointer arithmetic validation checks within the affected codebase prior to the dereference operation. When the mTower component receives a request containing a pointer, it proceeds to use this pointer directly to read from or write to memory. If the pointer has been maliciously crafted, the application will dereference this address, allowing the attacker to perform read/write operations outside of intended memory bounds.\nThe attack flow generally proceeds as follows: First, the attacker identifies an interface—such as a driver, system service, or IPC handler—that accepts pointers as parameters. Second, the attacker invokes this interface, providing a manipulated memory address that points to critical system structures, kernel memory, or sensitive data stored within the secure enclave. Third, upon receipt of the request, the vulnerable mTower component, failing to validate the pointer, attempts to dereference it. Depending on whether the instruction is a load or store, the attacker can either read sensitive secret material or overwrite control flow data, such as return addresses on the stack or function pointers within the Global Offset Table (GOT), to hijack the execution flow.\nThis vulnerability is particularly impactful because mTower typically operates with high privileges within a TEE. An attacker capable of exploiting this flaw may bypass secure storage protections, extract cryptographic keys, or gain elevated execution privileges within the secure world, thereby neutralizing the security posture of the host device. The vulnerability remains present in all commits preceding 102d3dc75cf8e58e68e4bea54ae3c803992c91be."
}