HarmonyosOperating system · Huawei

CVE-2022-48478

CRITICAL · 9.8 CVSS v3.1 Published 2023-05-26
Mitigation only
No fix yet — a mitigation exists. There is no fixed release. A documented workaround reduces exposure in the meantime.
See remediation →
100/100
Remediation priority · Urgent
Remotely reachable No privileges Zero-click

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 · unedited
The facial recognition TA of some products lacks memory length verification. Successful exploitation of this vulnerability may cause exceptions of the facial recognition service.

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 confidence

The facial recognition Trusted Application (TA) in affected products fails to validate memory length parameters before processing data, allowing potential buffer overflows or memory corruption. This missing boundary check could enable an attacker to trigger service exceptions or potentially execute arbitrary code by supplying malformed input to the facial recognition subsystem.

MitigationVendor must release patched TA firmware that implements proper memory length validation before all memory operations in the facial recognition module.

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
HarmonyosOperating system
Affected:= 2.0

CVSS 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
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/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 checks

Work through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.

  1. Confirm HarmonyOS version
    Check system settings > About Phone > HarmonyOS version to verify the installed OS version is exactly 2.0
    Affected if The system is running HarmonyOS version 2.0 exactly
  2. Verify facial recognition is enabled
    Check device settings for face unlock or facial recognition feature status (Settings > Security > Face Recognition on HarmonyOS devices)
    Affected if Facial recognition face unlock feature is enabled and configured on the device
  3. Check facial recognition service logs
    Use device diagnostics or logcat to search for exceptions related to the facial recognition Trusted Application (TA) service - look for error entries mentioning 'face', 'facial', or 'TA' module
    Affected if Service exceptions, crashes, or anomalous error messages appear in logs related to the facial recognition subsystem
  4. Review memory operation failures
    Examine system and security logs for any memory corruption indicators, buffer overflow warnings, or unexpected service restarts occurring in the facial recognition module
    Affected if Memory-related failures, service exceptions, or unexpected restarts are logged in the facial recognition component

The device is affected if it runs HarmonyOS 2.0 and has facial recognition (face unlock) feature enabled, with potential indicators being service exceptions or memory-related errors in the facial recognition Trusted Application logs.

Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.

Check your environment

Paste your version and any relevant configuration and it will be compared against the affected criteria above. Do not include secrets or credentials.

AI-assisted, checked against the advisory. Informational, not a guarantee.

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 data
Mitigation available No clean upgrade yet — mitigate in the meantime
Mitigation

Vendor must release patched TA firmware that implements proper memory length validation before all memory operations in the facial recognition module.

Fix this in Harmonyos Scoped from the published advisory
  • Consultation8.0 h
  • Implementation4.0 h
  • Testing12.0 h
  • Review / QA6.0 h
30.0 hours of engineering $5,200
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Scan for this in your stack

Free · runs locally
dbcve dependency scanner

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2022-48478 in production — separate from our analysis above.

No notes yet

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What this is

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.

What belongs here
  • 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
  • No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data