Description

In apu, there is a possible application crash due to double free. This could lead to local denial of service with no additional execution privileges needed. User interaction is not needed for exploitation. Patch ID: ALPS11249024; Issue ID: MSV-9168.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "6.2",
  "pubDate": "2026-10-05T02:16:52.033Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-10-05T02:16:52.033Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A critical vulnerability has been identified within the APU component, characterized by a double free memory corruption flaw.\nThis vulnerability allows an attacker to trigger an application crash, resulting in a local denial of service (DoS) condition.\nThe flaw affects the APU product and resides in its memory management routines.\nExploitation does not require elevated execution privileges, nor does it necessitate user interaction, making the attack surface significantly accessible to local threat actors.\nThe primary risk implication is the potential for system instability or service termination through memory corruption.\nThis issue is tracked under Issue ID: MSV-9168 and is addressed by Patch ID: ALPS11249024.",
  "technicalDetails": "The vulnerability originates from an error in the memory management logic within the APU component, specifically a double free condition.\nIn C/C++ environments, a double free occurs when the application calls the free() function multiple times on the same memory address without an intervening allocation. This action corrupts the heap's metadata, specifically the structures used by the memory allocator (such as the glibc malloc implementation or similar custom heap allocators) to track free chunks.\nWhen an application attempts to free a pointer that has already been returned to the heap manager, the internal integrity of the heap's free lists or bin structures is compromised. Subsequent memory operations—such as future malloc() calls—will operate on corrupted metadata, leading to unpredictable program states.\nIn the context of the APU component, the vulnerability is triggered when the application logic erroneously invokes the deallocation function twice on the same memory buffer. Because this occurs locally, an attacker can manipulate the application's environment or input to induce the specific code path that triggers the secondary free operation.\nThe attack flow proceeds as follows: First, the attacker ensures the target memory object is allocated. Second, the attacker interacts with the APU component via IPC (Inter-Process Communication) or local system calls to trigger the initial free of the object. Third, the attacker exploits a logic flaw within the APU state machine to cause a secondary deallocation of the same memory pointer. Finally, the resulting heap corruption causes the memory manager to crash the process, successfully executing a local denial of service.\nBecause the vulnerability does not require authentication or elevated privileges, any local user process capable of interfacing with the APU component can potentially induce the crash. The impact is immediate service cessation; however, depending on the heap structure and timing, double free vulnerabilities can also be leveraged for arbitrary code execution if the heap metadata is carefully manipulated to return a controlled memory address to the application. In this specific case, the stated impact is a denial of service."
}