CVE-2026-5729

CVE-2026-5729 is a use-after-free (CWE-416) in Arm's Valhall GPU kernel driver and Arm 5th Gen GPU Architecture kernel driver, affecting releases r50p0 through r54p3 plus r55p0. A local, non-privileged process can trigger the flaw by issuing otherwise-valid GPU processing operations that cause the driver to access already-freed memory. Successful exploitation has high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CVSS 7.8, AV:L/PR:L), consistent with kernel-level memory access or corruption and potential local privilege escalation on the affected host. Affected systems are any machines shipping those driver revisions, most commonly Android and other Linux-based devices whose SoC or device vendor integrates Mali-family GPUs built on the Valhall or 5th Gen GPU Architecture. No public proof-of-concept or in-the-wild exploitation is currently known, and EPSS places the 30-day exploitation probability at roughly 0.1% (4th percentile).

What to do: Update the Arm GPU kernel driver to a fixed release later than r55p0, which will be delivered through your silicon or device vendor's security update channel (e.g., Android OEM patches); identify exposed systems by checking for driver revisions r50p0-r54p3 or r55p0. As an interim mitigation, restrict which local processes can open the GPU device nodes. Monitor Arm and vendor advisories for the fixed revision and patch timelines.