CVE-2023-33106
Memory Safety in Qualcomm Ar8035 Firmware
Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2023-33106 is a high-severity Use of Out-of-range Pointer Offset (CWE-823) vulnerability in Qualcomm Ar8035 Firmware. Its CVSS base score is 8.4 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Data Obfuscation (T1001); ranked in the top 45% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; CISA has added it to the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.
Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary
Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.
CVE-2023-33106 is a memory corruption vulnerability in Qualcomm's KGSL GPU driver, triggered when an AUX command containing an excessively large list of sync points is submitted through the IOCTL_KGSL_GPU_AUX_COMMAND interface. The flaw maps to CWE-823 and CWE-119 and carries a CVSS 3.1 score of 8.4, reflecting local attack vector, low complexity, and no required privileges or user interaction.
A local attacker on an affected Qualcomm device can supply a maliciously crafted AUX command to corrupt kernel memory, resulting in arbitrary code execution or denial of service with full confidentiality, integrity, and availability impact on the GPU subsystem.
Qualcomm's December 2023 security bulletin addresses the issue with patches for impacted chipsets; the vulnerability is also catalogued in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities list, confirming in-the-wild exploitation. The current EPSS score of 0.0017 remains low and shows no material upward movement.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2023-37295
Vulnerability Data
Memory corruption while submitting a large list of sync points in an AUX command to the IOCTL_KGSL_GPU_AUX_COMMAND.
- CWE(s)
- KEV Date Added
- 05 December 2023
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
—
—
- 1 hardening rule · 1 OS baseline
V1.4.1
Likely Mitigating Controls AI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
Ongoing control assessments and code testing (static/dynamic analysis, fuzzing) surface memory buffer restriction failures, which are then remediated before release.
Managed runtimes used by platform-independent applications (e.g., JVM, CLR) enforce memory safety, preventing most buffer overflows that require direct memory manipulation.
Memory protections (e.g., W^X, ASLR) make exploitation of buffer-boundary violations far harder to turn into code execution.
Detects exploitation attempts that produce memory corruption, crashes, or anomalous behavior.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC mandates input validation and bounds checking that can prevent out-of-range pointer offsets.
A.8.26 only requires that security requirements (including resilience against buffer overflows or SQL injections) be identified and specified during development or acquisition; it does not itself enforce, implement, or prevent out-of-range pointer arithmetic in the resulting application.
Secure coding standards directly forbid unsafe pointer arithmetic and require bounds checks.
Security testing can detect out-of-range pointer offsets before release.
Hardening callouts derived
Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (higher-evidence rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).
Windows 10 (1 rule)
- V-220726 Data Execution Prevention (DEP) must be configured to at least OptOut. blocks CWE-823