Arm GPU Kernel Driver EUVD-2026-72796

Exploitation requires a local non-privileged user session on the target device and the ability to submit GPU commands - meaning access to the GPU device interface (e.g., /dev/mali or equivalent ioctl surface). No network access, no elevated authentication, and no user interaction beyond the attacker's own process is required. Limiting factors include: (1) physical or logical local access is mandatory - remote-only attackers cannot exploit this directly; (2) the target must run one of the affected driver revisions across Bifrost (r49p3-r49p5, r51p0, r54p1-r54p2), Valhall (r49p3-r49p5, r51p0-r54p3, r55p0), or 5th Gen (r49p3-r49p5, r51p0-r54p3, r55p0); (3) SELinux or seccomp profiles that deny GPU ioctl access to the attacker's process context would prevent exploitation.

The CVSS 7.8 vector (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) is well-calibrated: local access with only low privileges and no user interaction or special conditions required, combined with full C/I/A impact on the kernel driver context. EPSS at 0.14% (4th percentile) reflects the absence of current widespread exploitation tooling, but this should not be read as permanent safety - GPU kernel driver UAFs have been weaponized in targeted Android privilege-escalation campaigns historically, and low EPSS on a freshly disclosed local priv-esc is typical. The vulnerability is not in CISA KEV and no public POC has been identified, placing it in the disclosed-but-not-yet-weaponized category. Even a mid-sized municipal IT team in boleslawiec managing an Android device fleet or Arm-based embedded infrastructure should treat this as a credible local privilege escalation risk warranting patch deployment when OEM or BSP updates carry the fixed driver revision. SSVC assessment: exploitation=none, automatable=no (requires local code execution context), technical-impact=total. The official vector marks Scope as Unchanged (S:U); some analysts may argue that kernel driver compromise from a user process implies S:C, though this framing question does not materially change patch urgency.

A local attacker with a low-privileged shell on an Android device or embedded Arm system crafts a sequence of GPU memory allocation and deallocation operations via the Mali GPU ioctl interface, causing the kernel driver to retain a stale pointer to freed memory. By issuing subsequent GPU commands that dereference this pointer, the attacker gains a kernel read/write primitive and escalates to root or kernel code execution. No public exploit code exists at time of analysis.