Samsung Exynos Wi-Fi Driver Use-After-Free Vulnerability (CVE-2025-54602)

CVE-2025-54602 is a use-after-free vulnerability affecting the Wi-Fi driver in Samsung Mobile Processor and Wearable Processor Exynos chipsets. This vulnerability impacts the following Exynos models: 980, 850, 1080, 1280, 1330, 1380, 1480, 1580, W920, W930, and W1000. The root cause is an improper synchronization on a global variable within the driver, leading to a potential use-after-free scenario. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by triggering a race condition through concurrent invocation of an ioctl function from multiple threads. Successful exploitation can lead to memory corruption, arbitrary code execution, and ultimately, device compromise. This vulnerability poses a significant risk to devices using the affected Exynos chipsets, including smartphones and wearable devices.

Attack Chain

1. Attacker gains initial access to the target device, which could be through a malicious application installed by the user.
2. The malicious application creates multiple threads to concurrently access the Wi-Fi driver.
3. Each thread invokes the vulnerable ioctl function within the Wi-Fi driver.
4. Due to the lack of proper synchronization, a race condition occurs when accessing a global variable.
5. One thread frees the memory associated with the global variable, while another thread continues to access it.
6. The second thread attempts to use the freed memory, resulting in a use-after-free condition.
7. The use-after-free condition leads to memory corruption, potentially allowing the attacker to overwrite critical data structures.
8. The attacker leverages the memory corruption to gain arbitrary code execution within the context of the Wi-Fi driver, potentially leading to full device compromise.

Impact

Successful exploitation of CVE-2025-54602 can lead to a range of severe consequences. An attacker could potentially gain arbitrary code execution on the affected device. Given the wide deployment of Samsung devices using the vulnerable Exynos chipsets, the potential number of victims is significant. Impacted sectors include mobile communications, consumer electronics, and wearable technology. A successful attack could result in data theft, device bricking, or the installation of persistent malware.

Recommendation

• Apply the security updates provided by Samsung that address CVE-2025-54602 on affected Exynos chipsets. Refer to the Samsung security update webpage for specific patch versions (https://semiconductor.samsung.com/support/quality-support/product-security-updates/cve-2025-54602/).
• Monitor for unusual process creation originating from applications interacting with Wi-Fi functionalities using the Sigma rule provided below.
• Implement runtime memory protection mechanisms to detect and prevent use-after-free vulnerabilities during the execution of applications and system services.