CVE-2021-36987
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 · uneditedThere is a issue that nodes in the linked list being freed for multiple times in Huawei Smartphone due to race conditions. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability can cause the system to restart.
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 · moderate confidenceA race condition in Huawei Smartphone allows linked list nodes to be freed multiple times (double-free). When multiple threads or processes concurrently access and modify the linked list without proper synchronization, the same node can be deallocated repeatedly, leading to memory corruption and system restart.
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 data= 10.1.1= 11.0.0= 3.1.1= 4.0.0CVSS 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
- High
- Privileges
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
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 your device's operating system versionGo to Settings > About Phone on your Huawei device and locate the EMUI or Magic UI version number listedAffected if The displayed version exactly matches 10.1.1 or 11.0.0 for EMUI, or 3.1.1 or 4.0.0 for Magic UI
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Confirm the specific EMUI or Magic UI buildIn Settings > About Phone > Version, check for any additional build numbers or sub-version identifiers that further specify your exact OS releaseAffected if The build indicates EMUI 10.1.1, EMUI 11.0.0, Magic UI 3.1.1, or Magic UI 4.0.0
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Determine your device modelCheck Settings > About Phone > Model to identify the exact Huawei device modelAffected if The device runs any Huawei smartphone model with the listed affected EMUI or Magic UI versions installed
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Verify if linked list operations are triggered in your environmentThis vulnerability exists in the OS kernel's linked list handling. Monitor for unusual system behavior such as unexpected restarts, app crashes, or memory errors that could indicate the race condition is being triggeredAffected if You observe repeated system crashes or memory corruption symptoms, particularly when multiple apps or processes are running concurrently
Your device is affected if it is running EMUI version 10.1.1 or 11.0.0, or Magic UI version 3.1.1 or 4.0.0, as these are the exact versions containing the vulnerable linked list code.
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 the vendor-supplied firmware/security patch for CVE-2021-36987 when available. If unable to patch, monitor for unusual system behavior and avoid running untrusted applications that may trigger the race condition.
- Consultation4.0 h
- Implementation8.0 h
- Testing6.0 h
- Review / QA4.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2021-36987 — 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-2021-36987 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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A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.
- 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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