CVE-2021-0891
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedAn unprivileged app can trigger PowerVR driver to return an uninitialized heap memory causing information disclosure.Product: AndroidVersions: Android SoCAndroid ID: A-236849490
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceAn information disclosure vulnerability in the PowerVR GPU driver allows an unprivileged Android application to trigger the driver to return uninitialized heap memory contents. This occurs because the driver fails to properly initialize memory buffers before returning them to userspace, leaking potentially sensitive kernel heap data.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE dataall versionsCVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- None
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Identify if the device uses a PowerVR GPUCheck /sys/class/misc/mali0/device/gpu_model or run 'cat /proc/pvr/version' if available, or look at 'dmesg | grep -i powervr' outputAffected if The device contains a PowerVR GPU (e.g., PowerVR SGX, PowerVR Rogue series) in its hardware specifications
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Confirm the GPU driver is loadedRun 'lsmod' or check /proc/modules for modules like 'pvrsrvkm', 'pvr_um', or 'mali' related to PowerVR, and verify the driver is actively in useAffected if The PowerVR GPU driver module is loaded and active on the device
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Verify the Android version in useCheck the Android version via 'getprop ro.build.version.release' or Settings > About Phone > Android versionAffected if The device runs any version of Android (the vulnerability affects all Android versions with the vulnerable driver)
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Check if unprivileged apps can access GPU memoryThis is inherent to the vulnerability - the flaw allows any unprivileged app to trigger the driver to return uninitialized heap memory; no special configuration check is needed as the issue is in the driver code itselfAffected if The device has a PowerVR GPU with the unpatched driver - the vulnerability is present by default in the driver logic
The device is affected if it contains a PowerVR GPU and runs on Android, since the driver returns uninitialized heap memory to any unprivileged application without requiring special configuration or feature enablement.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataApply vendor-supplied firmware/driver updates for the PowerVR GPU. This is a platform-level vulnerability that cannot be remediated through application-level changes and requires patching the GPU driver or firmware provided by the SoC manufacturer.
- Consultation8.0 h
- Implementation24.0 h
- Testing16.0 h
- Review / QA8.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2021-0891 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2021-0891 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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