Description

An issue was discovered in camera in Samsung Mobile Processor Exynos 1580 and 2500. An untrusted pointer dereference occurs when a malformed message is sent to the camera driver, causing limited information disclosure or denial of service.

Executive Summary

Technical Details

Mitigations

References

Additional Metadata

{
  "score": "6.4",
  "pubDate": "2026-09-14T02:17:14.987Z",
  "pubdate": "2026-09-14T02:17:14.987Z",
  "executiveSummary": "A critical security vulnerability has been identified within the camera driver component of Samsung Exynos 1580 and Exynos 2500 mobile processors.\nThe vulnerability is classified as an untrusted pointer dereference, which occurs when the driver fails to properly validate input received through inter-process communication (IPC) channels.\nAn attacker capable of sending a malformed message to the camera driver can trigger this flaw, leading to either a denial of service (system crash) or limited information disclosure.\nThe impact is significant as it affects low-level hardware abstraction layers, potentially granting local adversaries a mechanism to destabilize the device or gain visibility into protected memory segments.\nExploitation requires the ability to interact with the camera driver interface, typically necessitating a malicious application or an escalated local process.\nGiven that the vulnerability resides within the processor firmware/driver stack, it poses a risk to the integrity and availability of the mobile device.",
  "technicalDetails": "The root cause of this vulnerability is an improper validation of pointers provided by an untrusted source within the camera driver subsystem. Specifically, the driver routine responsible for parsing incoming IPC messages fails to verify the memory addresses contained within the payload before dereferencing them.\nIn the context of the Exynos 1580 and 2500 camera driver architecture, the driver acts as an interface between the user-space camera service and the underlying hardware. When a malformed message is transmitted to this driver, the parser may interpret an attacker-controlled value as a valid pointer. Upon dereferencing this untrusted pointer, the kernel or secure subsystem attempts to access memory at a location that may not be mapped, is restricted, or contains sensitive data.\nThe attack flow proceeds as follows: First, an attacker establishes communication with the camera driver interface. Second, the attacker crafts a malicious IPC message containing an arbitrary or specially crafted pointer value designed to bypass validation checks. Third, the driver receives this message and initiates processing. During the processing phase, the driver accesses the address pointed to by the malicious input. If the address is invalid, the system encounters an unhandled page fault, resulting in a kernel panic or immediate process termination, thereby achieving a denial of service. If the address is valid but unauthorized, the driver may perform operations on or return data from that memory, leading to information disclosure.\nBecause the camera driver operates with elevated privileges relative to standard user-space applications, this flaw permits an attacker to perform memory operations that would otherwise be prohibited by the operating system's memory protection unit (MPU) or memory management unit (MMU). The vulnerability exists within the kernel-mode driver code, which lacks sufficient bounds checking and pointer sanitization logic for IPC inputs.\nThe exploitation does not necessarily require network exposure, as the attack is performed locally by an actor capable of triggering the camera driver's functionality. The primary post-exploitation impact includes the ability to exfiltrate limited fragments of memory if the dereference can be controlled to read sensitive kernel or hardware state, or simply the ability to cause a persistent crash cycle of the camera subsystem, effectively disabling camera functionality and impacting overall system stability."
}