The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has identified and included six vulnerabilities affecting Samsung smartphones in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, indicating that they have likely been targeted by a commercial spyware vendor.
CISA’s catalog update also encompasses eight additional vulnerabilities, including two related to D-Link routers exploited by a variant of the Mirai botnet. Samsung had already addressed all six security flaws in its mobile devices with patches released in 2021.
Among the vulnerabilities, CVE-2021-25487 stands out, which involves an out-of-bounds read in the modem interface driver that can potentially lead to arbitrary code execution. Although Samsung classifies the bug as “moderate,” its severity is regarded as “high” based on the CVSS score outlined in the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). Another vulnerability addressed in the same patch batch is CVE-2021-25489, a low-severity format string bug in the modem interface driver that can trigger a denial-of-service condition.
CISA’s updated catalog also includes CVE-2021-25394 and CVE-2021-25395, moderate-severity use-after-free bugs found in the MFC charger driver, both fixed by Samsung in May 2021.
The final two vulnerabilities, CVE-2021-25371 and CVE-2021-25372, are also considered moderate-severity issues. CVE-2021-25371 enables attackers to load arbitrary ELF files within the DSP driver, while CVE-2021-25372 involves an out-of-bounds access vulnerability in the same driver, both of which were patched by Samsung in March 2021.
Although no public reports exist about the exploitation of the recently added Samsung mobile device vulnerabilities listed in CISA’s “must-patch” catalog, it is highly likely that they have been exploited by a commercial spyware vendor. Samsung has not updated its old advisories to inform users about the vulnerabilities’ exploitation.
Google previously disclosed three similar vulnerabilities in Samsung phones with 2021 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) identifiers that had been exploited by an undisclosed spyware vendor, strengthening the theory that the flaws in CISA’s catalog have also been targeted by similar actors monitored by Google.
