Arm Mali GPU Kernel Driver Use-After-Free Vulnerability
CVE-2022-38181 · Arm Mali Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) · Published 2022-10-25
How bad would it be?
8.8 out of 10
CVSS rates it high.
How likely is it to be used?
18%
Estimated chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 97% of all scored flaws (EPSS, 2026-10-29).
Is it already being used?
Yes
CISA has seen it exploited in real attacks. For US government agencies the fix is deadline passed 1289 days ago (2023-04-20).
What CISA says to do
Apply updates per vendor instructions.
Arm Mali GPU Kernel Driver contains a use-after-free vulnerability that may allow a non-privileged user to gain root privilege and/or disclose information.
The Arm Mali GPU kernel driver allows unprivileged users to access freed memory because GPU memory operations are mishandled. This affects Bifrost r0p0 through r38p1, and r39p0; Valhall r19p0 through r38p1, and r39p0; and Midgard r4p0 through r32p0.
Understand the kind of weakness behind this flaw. These resources teach the weakness, rather than reproduce this specific CVE. Follow the vendor's advice above to fix the affected product.
Use-after-free
A program uses memory after releasing it, when its contents may belong to something else.
CWE is a catalogue of weakness types. Labels come from the sources shown and can differ or change. Resource matches reviewed 16 October 2026.
On SentryFeed
No story in the last 14 days has mentioned it.
Exploited flaws from CISA's KEV catalogue. Chance of exploitation from EPSS by FIRST. Descriptions and scores from the NVD. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.