CVE-2026-21380
Published: 06 April 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-21380 is a high-severity Use After Free (CWE-416) vulnerability in Qualcomm Cologne Firmware. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 3.0th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-16 (Memory Protection) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2026-21380 is a memory corruption vulnerability stemming from the use of deprecated DMABUF IOCTL calls to manage video memory, classified under CWE-416 (Use After Free). Published on 2026-04-06, it carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.8 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H). The vulnerability affects Qualcomm products, as outlined in their security documentation.
A local attacker with low privileges can exploit this issue through low-complexity attacks requiring no user interaction. Exploitation triggers memory corruption in video memory handling, enabling high-impact consequences including unauthorized data access, modification, or system disruption.
Qualcomm's April 2026 security bulletin (https://docs.qualcomm.com/product/publicresources/securitybulletin/april-2026-bulletin.html) details available patches and recommended mitigations for addressing the vulnerability.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-19336
Vulnerability details
Memory Corruption when using deprecated DMABUF IOCTL calls to manage video memory.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Local use-after-free memory corruption in kernel video/DMABUF handling directly provides an exploit primitive for privilege escalation from low-privileged local context to full system compromise.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Timely remediation through vendor patches directly eliminates the use-after-free memory corruption in deprecated DMABUF IOCTL calls for video memory management.
Memory protection mechanisms such as address space layout randomization, non-executable memory, and stack canaries comprehensively mitigate exploitation of the use-after-free vulnerability in video memory.
Least functionality restricts or disables deprecated DMABUF IOCTL capabilities in video drivers, reducing the attack surface for local low-privilege memory corruption attacks.