Vulnerability · Published Jun 3, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-40290OP-TEE has a Use-After-Free race in FF-A shared-memory teardown
High 7.8
In plain English
A high-severity use-after-free in optee_os from OP-TEE. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 8% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
OP-TEE is a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) designed as companion to a non-secure Linux kernel running on Arm; Cortex-A cores using the TrustZone technology. Starting in version 3.16.0 and prior to 4.11.0, a user-after-free (UAF) race condition exists in the shared memory teardown logic of FF-A within OP-TEE SPMC/SP flows. This only applies when OP-TEE is configured as an SPMC for S-EL0 SPs, that is, with `CFG_SECURE_PARTITION=y`. The function `sp_mem_remove()`, responsible for freeing entries in `smem->receivers` and `smem->regions`, fails to acquire the global `sp_mem_lock` before performing the `free()` operations. Concurrently, other code paths, such as `sp_mem_get_receiver()`, iterate over these same lists without holding a lock, or, like `sp_mem_is_shared()`, iterate while holding the lock but are not serialized against the unprotected `free()` in `sp_mem_remove()`. This creates a cross-thread race where a thread iterating the list can acquire a pointer to an entry (e.g., `struct sp_mem_map_region` or `struct sp_mem_receiver`), and then another thread calls `sp_mem_remove()`, freeing the object. When the first thread resumes and dereferences the pointer, it results in a Use-After-Free vulnerability. Version 4.11.0 fixes the issue.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian:13 | optee-os | no fix listed | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-40290 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | optee-os | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-40290 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | optee-os | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-40290 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | optee-os | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-40290 |
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-416 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
References
- https://github.com/OP-TEE/optee_os/security/advisories/GHSA-332c-xr93-849m x_refsource_CONFIRM