Threats / Qualcomm / CVE-2020-11261

CVE-2020-11261 · EUVD no mirror located · GCVE no mirror located Verified 2026-09-19

Qualcomm Snapdragon Auto, Compute, Connectivity, Consumer IO vulnerability

Memory corruption in Qualcomm Snapdragon platforms due to improper validation of large memory allocation requests, allowing potential code execution or denial of service.

Verdict

Today item — known-exploited.

A memory corruption vulnerability affecting multiple Snapdragon product lines stems from insufficient error checking when applications request excessive memory allocation. This can be exploited to corrupt memory and potentially achieve code execution or crash the device.

CISA KEV Yes · 2021-12-01⁴EPSS 0.01772 (verify live)⁵CVSS 7.8 (CISA)³CISA SSVC Exploitation: active · Automatable: no · Impact: total³

Is it exploitable?

— the evidence, ranked above the score

Reported exploitation

2 independent public reports of in-the-wild exploitation are cataloged.Distinct reporting sources (vendor, incident response, government); open them for the underlying claims.

docs.google.com ↗cisa.gov ↗Confirmed

Exploited in the wild

Listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-12-01).

CISA KEV ↗Confirmed

Probability (EPSS)

EPSS 0.01772 — modeled likelihood of exploitation activity.EPSS is a daily-changing model output — open the source for today's value.

FIRST EPSS ↗High

Severity / affected

CVSS 7.8 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) · Affected: Qualcomm, Snapdragon Auto, Snapdragon Compute, Snapdragon Connectivity, Snapdragon Consumer IOT, Snapdragon Industrial IOT, Snapdragon Mobile, Snapdragon Voice & Music, Snapdragon Wearables. Confirm exact fixed builds in the vendor advisory.CVSS — CISA-assigned via the ADP container (CVE.org), version 3.1; the CNA left no metrics, so CISA's own score is used ahead of NVD.

CISA-ADP ↗Reported

Weakness (CWE)

Mapped to CWE-20 Improper Input Validation.CWE assignment from the public NVD record (may be stale); the weakness class drives how the flaw is exploited.

NVD ↗Reported

CISA SSVC (triage disposition)

Exploitation: active · Automatable: no · Technical Impact: totalCISA's own stakeholder-specific triage inputs, published in the CVE record (CISA Coordinator role). NOTE: this is CISA's three decision points; the final Act/Attend/Track decision also requires a Mission & Well-being input not published here, so no overall decision is asserted.

CISA-ADP ↗Reported

Currency of the record

CISA added this to its KEV catalog 175 days after the CVE record was published.KEV lag = CISA-KEV dateAdded − CVE.org datePublished; a floor on how long the known-exploited flaw sat in the public record before the federal catalog listed it. Severity/weakness here is CNA- or CISA-assigned (current at disclosure), independent of NVD's analysis backlog.

CISA KEV ↗CVE.org ↗Reported

WeaknessCWE-20 · Improper Input Validation

Who’s exploiting it?

— attribution turns risk into urgency

Attribution not established

No confirmed (advisory-backed) threat-actor attribution is established for this record. Absence of a named actor is not absence of compromise — see Coverage & confidence.

Why it matters

— the attack path, told twice: adversary, then board

Front door — unauthenticated access narrative 1

Attacker

I craft a malicious application that requests an abnormally large memory allocation to trigger the validation bypass.

Business

Device stability and integrity are compromised through memory corruption, leading to potential service disruption or unauthorized code execution.

Keys to the kingdom — privilege/identity takeover narrative 2

Attacker

I exploit the memory corruption to overwrite adjacent memory regions and gain elevated privileges or execute arbitrary code.

Business

User data confidentiality and device security are at risk if attackers achieve code execution on affected Snapdragon devices across consumer, industrial, and automotive deployments.

What to do

— defensible action

Remediate per the vendor advisory — confirm the fixed build for your version and verify exposure.¹

Say it to the boardA vulnerability with this evidence profile is a defensible budget line, not a backlog ticket — fund the change against the proof above.

Coverage & confidence

— what we know, and what we don’t

Established (cited)

KEV listing (CISA)

EPSS probability (FIRST)

2 reported-exploitation source(s)

CVSS 7.8 — CISA-assigned (CVE.org ADP)

CISA SSVC triage disposition (CVE.org ADP)

CWE weakness mapping (NVD feed — CNA left none)

Catalogued by qualcomm (CNA)

Coverage gaps — stated, not hidden

No EUVD / GCVE mirror in feed — single-authority dependency for the identifier.

EPSS & exposure are time-varying; verify live at the source.

Threat-actor attribution not established from feed data — absence of a name is not absence of compromise.

No finder is named in the public CVE record — attribution scoped to the sources checked.

Disclosure & credit²

Catalogued by qualcommCNA

Credited with finding itNo finder is named in the public CVE record or the scanned vendor advisory — attribution scoped to the sources checked.

Found an error? Propose a correction.

A correction is a cited counter-claim — it must cite a source, gets reviewed by a second human, and is never auto-applied. See the correction convention and our identity npub1j7gt9ky7sfcrjn8jjee6693dkzvk4rahs0fk2suu7968dfns62zs3mqm3y.

With JavaScript off: publish a signed kind 1111 Nostr event tagging ["r", "https://basicsecurity.net/threat/cve-2020-11261.html"], ["v", "sha256:308c64e46d82418d8aae89ca3a96eb9644d43dd232db516c22d068d132a220a6"] (the record version), plus ["src", "<your source URL>"] and ["t", "correction"], per the correction convention. Our identity: npub1j7gt9ky7sfcrjn8jjee6693dkzvk4rahs0fk2suu7968dfns62zs3mqm3y. Cite-or-die: an event with no src is a coverage finding, not a proposal.