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Mallory
Medium

Use-After-Free in Arm Valhall / 5th Gen GPU Kernel Driver

IdentifiersCVE-2025-6349CWE-416· Use After Free

CVE-2025-6349 is a use-after-free vulnerability in Arm Ltd's Valhall GPU Kernel Driver and Arm 5th Gen GPU Architecture Kernel Driver. According to the provided content, a local non-privileged user process can perform improper GPU memory processing operations and gain access to memory that has already been freed. The issue affects driver versions from r53p0 through r54p1. The flaw is in the kernel GPU driver’s handling of GPU memory lifecycle/state, where freed memory can remain reachable through subsequent processing operations, creating a stale reference condition in kernel-space driver logic.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

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Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation can allow a local unprivileged process to access previously freed memory through the GPU kernel driver. In practice, this can expose sensitive data resident in reclaimed memory and may also create a path toward further memory corruption consequences depending on allocator state and exploitability on a given device build. The Android bulletin context classifies the issue as high severity in Arm Mali GPU components.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

Until patched drivers are deployed, reduce exposure by limiting installation and execution of untrusted local applications, since the issue requires local code execution from a non-privileged process. Enterprise defenders should prioritize vendor security updates for affected Android devices, verify OEM integration of the Arm GPU driver fix, and restrict devices that cannot receive the December 2025 vendor patch level from accessing sensitive environments. No specific configuration-based workaround is provided in the supplied content.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Update affected Arm Valhall GPU Kernel Driver and Arm 5th Gen GPU Architecture Kernel Driver versions from r53p0 through r54p1 to a vendor/OEM release that incorporates Arm's fix for CVE-2025-6349. On Android, deploy the relevant vendor firmware/security update included in the December 2025 Android Security Bulletin, preferably at the 2025-12-05 patch level or later where the vendor-specific GPU fixes are included.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

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VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

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VendorProductType
Arm5th Gen Gpu Architecture Kernel Driverapplication
ArmValhall Gpu Kernel Driverapplication

Vendor-confirmed product mapping. Mallory continuously reconciles this list against your asset inventory.

What this page doesn’t show

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Threat actor evidence

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Associated malware

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Detection signatures

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Vendor-by-vendor mapping

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Social activity2

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