CVE-2025-49495: Samsung Exynos Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

CVE-2025-49495 Overview

CVE-2025-49495 is a buffer overflow vulnerability in the WiFi driver used by Samsung Mobile Processor Exynos 1380, 1480, 1580, and 2400 chipsets. The driver mishandles an NL80211 vendor command, allowing attackers with local access to corrupt kernel memory. Successful exploitation can lead to privilege escalation, kernel code execution, or denial of service on affected mobile devices. The flaw is tracked as CWE-120 (Classic Buffer Overflow) and requires no user interaction or authentication on the local attack surface.

Critical Impact

A local attacker can trigger a buffer overflow in the Exynos WiFi driver to compromise confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the device kernel.

Affected Products

• Samsung Exynos 1380 (firmware and hardware)
• Samsung Exynos 1480 and Exynos 1580 (firmware and hardware)
• Samsung Exynos 2400 (firmware and hardware)

Discovery Timeline

• 2026-01-05 - CVE-2025-49495 published to NVD
• 2026-01-09 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-49495

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability resides in the Samsung Exynos WiFi driver's handling of an NL80211 vendor command. NL80211 is the netlink-based interface that user-space utilities such as wpa_supplicant and iw use to communicate with kernel WiFi drivers. Vendor commands extend this interface with hardware-specific operations defined by the silicon vendor.

The driver fails to validate the size of attributes supplied in a vendor command before copying them into a fixed-size kernel buffer. This produces a classic buffer overflow inside the kernel address space. An attacker can stage crafted netlink messages to overwrite adjacent kernel structures, function pointers, or return addresses.

Because the WiFi driver executes in kernel context, a successful overflow yields kernel-level write primitives. This enables privilege escalation from an unprivileged local process to the kernel.

Root Cause

The root cause is missing or insufficient bounds checking on user-controlled length fields parsed from the NL80211 vendor command before a memory copy operation. The vendor-specific command handler trusts attribute lengths supplied by user space and writes beyond the destination buffer boundary.

Attack Vector

The attack vector is local. A malicious application or process with permission to send netlink messages to the WiFi subsystem can issue a crafted vendor command. On Android devices using affected Exynos SoCs, this typically requires code execution as a local user. No user interaction is required, and the overflow occurs entirely within the kernel.

No public proof-of-concept exploit code is available for CVE-2025-49495. Technical details should be sourced from the Samsung CVE-2025-49495 advisory.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-49495

Indicators of Compromise

• Unexpected kernel panics or reboots referencing the WiFi driver or cfg80211/nl80211 subsystems in dmesg and logcat output.
• Anomalous applications opening NETLINK_GENERIC sockets and issuing vendor-specific NL80211_CMD_VENDOR commands without legitimate need.
• Kernel oops or KASAN reports referencing out-of-bounds writes in Samsung Exynos WiFi driver functions.

Detection Strategies

• Monitor mobile device telemetry for repeated WiFi driver crashes correlated with specific application activity.
• Inspect Android bug reports and tombstones for stack traces involving the Exynos WiFi driver and netlink vendor command paths.
• Apply mobile threat defense signatures that flag applications attempting to interact directly with low-level WiFi netlink interfaces.

Monitoring Recommendations

• Centralize Android device logs and kernel crash dumps for fleet-wide visibility into driver-level instability.
• Track Samsung firmware patch levels across managed devices and alert on devices remaining on vulnerable builds.
• Correlate WiFi subsystem crashes with application install events to identify potentially malicious actors triggering the flaw.

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-49495

Immediate Actions Required

• Apply the Samsung Exynos security update referenced in the vendor advisory as soon as the corresponding device OEM ships the firmware build.
• Inventory mobile fleets for devices powered by Exynos 1380, 1480, 1580, and 2400 chipsets and prioritize patching.
• Restrict installation of untrusted applications on affected devices until the patch is deployed.

Patch Information

Samsung has published a fix and details for CVE-2025-49495 on its Product Security Updates portal and the dedicated CVE-2025-49495 advisory page. Device-level patches are delivered through the corresponding handset vendor's monthly security update channel.

Workarounds

• Disable WiFi on affected devices when the interface is not required, reducing the attack surface exposed by the vulnerable driver.
• Enforce mobile device management (MDM) policies that block sideloading and restrict applications to vetted enterprise app stores.
• Isolate vulnerable devices from sensitive network segments until the firmware update is applied.

# Verify Android security patch level on a managed device
adb shell getprop ro.build.version.security_patch
adb shell getprop ro.boot.hardware.platform