Amazon Fire TV Cube Rooted Using Four-Year-Old Arm Mali security flaw

What happened

A vulnerability in Arm’s Mali GPU (a chip built for many calculations at once, used for graphics and AI) driver, first disclosed four years ago, has been adapted to gain root access to the third-generation Amazon Fire TV Cube, allowing users to remove Amazon’s software restrictions and install alternative operating systems, according to Cybernews research shared with Hackread.com. Arm released a fix in Mali driver version r40p0 on October 7, 2022. Arm is based in Cambridge, and its products and services include software.

The exploit operates with CVE-2022-38181 (CVSS 8.8), a high-severity use-after-free vulnerability in the Arm Mali GPU kernel driver. The bug involves memory that the driver frees while it may still be in use, creating an opportunity to manipulate kernel memory and gain elevated privileges.

Security researcher Man Yue Mo reported the vulnerability to the Android security team on July 12, 2022. His original proof of concept showed how an unprivileged Android process could exploit the bug to execute code in the kernel and gain root access on a Google Pixel 6.

Key facts

• Arm — released: a fix in Mali driver version r40p0 on October 7, 2022
• The exploit — uses: CVE-2022-38181 (CVSS 8.8), a high-severity use-after-free vulnerability in the Arm Mali GPU kernel driver