How severe is CVE-2021-29256?

CVE-2021-29256 has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 8.8 (HIGH). EPSS estimates a 3.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

CVE-2021-29256: Arm Mali GPU Kernel Driver Use-After-Free

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities

Arm Mali GPU Kernel Driver Use-After-Free Vulnerability is confirmed as actively exploited and is listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Added to KEV

2023-07-07

Remediation due

2023-07-28

Required action
Apply updates per vendor instructions or discontinue use of the product if updates are unavailable.

CISA notes
https://developer.arm.com/Arm%20Security%20Center/Mali%20GPU%20Driver%20Vulnerabilities; https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-29256

Description

. The Arm Mali GPU kernel driver allows an unprivileged user to achieve access to freed memory, leading to information disclosure or root privilege escalation. This affects Bifrost r16p0 through r29p0 before r30p0, Valhall r19p0 through r29p0 before r30p0, and Midgard r28p0 through r30p0.

Severity

CVSS 3.1 · CISA8.8 HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

SSVC · CISA-ADP

Exploitationactive

Automatableno

Technical impacttotal

Exploitation Context

as of October 15, 2026

All KEV statistics→

CISA added CVE-2021-29256 to the KEV catalog 774 days after its CVE record was published. The median for entries added in 2023 is 12 days.
It is one of 9 Arm entries in the CISA KEV catalog, and one of 5 added in 2023.
Its current EPSS score (3.0%) is higher than that of 12% of CISA KEV entries.

Affected Products

Vendor	Product	Affected versions
-	-	n/a

References

1 Links

Other references

https://developer.arm.com/support/arm-security-updates/mali-gpu-kernel-driver

Record Details

Published

2021-05-24

Last updated

2025-10-21

Assigner (CNA)

mitre

Credited to

CVE record data © The MITRE Corporation, used under the CVE Terms of Use. Exploited-in-the-wild data from the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (CC0). Exploit prediction scores by FIRST EPSS (first.org/epss). This site is not endorsed or certified by MITRE, NVD, CISA, or FIRST.