CVE-2026-21382
Published: 06 April 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-21382 is a high-severity Classic Buffer Overflow (CWE-120) 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-10 (Information Input Validation) and SI-16 (Memory Protection).
Deeper analysis
CVE-2026-21382 is a memory corruption vulnerability stemming from improperly sized input/output buffers when handling power management requests, mapped to CWE-120 (Buffer Copy without Checking Size of Input). It affects components in Qualcomm products, as documented in their April 2026 security bulletin.
The vulnerability 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), indicating a local attack vector with low attack complexity and low required privileges. A local attacker possessing low privileges can exploit it without user interaction, potentially achieving high impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability, such as arbitrary code execution or system compromise.
Mitigation details are provided in the Qualcomm security bulletin at https://docs.qualcomm.com/product/publicresources/securitybulletin/april-2026-bulletin.html, published on 2026-04-06. Security practitioners should consult this advisory for patch availability and recommended actions.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-19339
Vulnerability details
Memory Corruption when handling power management requests with improperly sized input/output buffers.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Local memory corruption (buffer overflow) in Qualcomm power management directly enables privilege escalation via exploitation, matching T1068 with high C/I/A impact and arbitrary code execution.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly mitigates CVE-2026-21382 by requiring timely patching of the specific buffer sizing flaw in Qualcomm power management components as detailed in the security bulletin.
Prevents memory corruption from improperly sized buffers in power management requests by enforcing validation of input sizes per CWE-120.
Implements memory protections such as stack guards and ASLR to thwart exploitation of the buffer overflow vulnerability even if input validation fails.