ARM Mali GPUs are one of the most commonly used graphics processors in mobile SoCs. They can be found in many Android smartphones running Google Tensor, Samsung Exynos, HiSilicon Kirin and Mediatek chips.

This talk discusses a vulnerability in the ARM Mali GPU kernel driver for Android. The bug, which was publicly reported several years ago, acts as an interesting case study of how misunderstandings of Linux kernel APIs can lead to exploitable vulnerabilities.

In this talk, Angus gives an overview of key Linux kernel and GPU driver concepts, discusses the vulnerability and how it works, and walks through a public proof-of-concept exploit.