Emerging Vulnerability Impacting Automotive Products

What You’ll Learn

• Overview of the Vulnerability: Gain an understanding of CVE-2022-33216, including its nature, impact on Qualcomm components, and the potential risks it poses to automotive products.
• Identification of Affected Products: Learn about the challenges in identifying which specific automotive products are affected by this vulnerability and the tools available to streamline this process.
• Incident Response and Mitigation: Discover the importance of timely incident response in managing vulnerabilities and how Cybellum’s Product Security Platform supports effective vulnerability management.
• Role of SBOMs: Understand how a living SBOM contributes to detecting and addressing vulnerabilities and ensuring that all components are accounted for. Automated Security Solutions: Explore how automated tools can aid in monitoring for vulnerabilities and generating actionable insights before public details are available.

FVulnerability overview: The potential impact on OEMs

A new denial of service vulnerability, recently reported by Qualcomm, is having a direct impact on automotive products. The vulnerability has not yet been detailed on either the official NVD or MITRE web pages.

The vulnerability (CVE-2022-33216) which affects several Qualcomm components and products, was defined as “a transient Denial-of-Service in Automotive due to improper input validation while parsing an ELF file”. The access vector is local and the security rating was defined as ‘High’. It also received a CVSS score of 6.0 but, as we know, the actual severity may differ based on the exploitability and relevance of the vulnerability to specific vehicle or component functionalities.

The affected product list is as followed:

QAM8295P, QCA6574A, QCA6574AU, QCA6595, QCA6595AU, QCA6696, SA6145P, SA6150P, SA6155, SA6155P, SA8145P, SA8150P, SA8155, SA8155P, SA8195P, SA8295P, SA8540P, SA9000P.

Identifying which products are affected

The discovery of CVE-2022-33216 and the lack of details surrounding it raises the question of which exact products are affected. 

Most vehicle components are a complex mix of open-source and proprietary code, making it a challenge to manually detect which products are affected. Even if an SBOM exists, PSIRT teams must check that it is a living SBOM with all updated software components listed for each deployed version.

Using Cybellum’s automated Incident Response engine, teams can quickly discover which products or components are affected, as well as discover other critical vulnerabilities for that same component, as seen below:

Finding which products are affected using Cybellum’s Product Security Platform

Extracting relevant information about the vulnerability

Monitoring for additional critical vulnerabilities for the same component

This is just one example of such an analysis, as the exact information per OEM requires an analysis of the specific SBOMs and product software of each specific product portfolio.

Pro-Tip:

Ensure your SBOMs are current and comprehensive. For vulnerabilities like CVE-2022-33216, having an up-to-date SBOM helps accurately identify affected components and manage risks more effectively.

Executing continuous monitoring and incident response

This kind of event is yet another example of how critical timely incident response is for Automotive manufacturers and suppliers. By quickly identifying which products are affected by a new vulnerability the moment it is reported, PSIRT and product security teams can decide how critical it is, and mitigate accordingly. Cybellum’s Product Security Platform, specifically its Product Incident Response engine, enables that exact workflow, allowing teams to discover new vulnerabilities, even before they’re published on public sources such as the NVD. It then allows those teams to quickly identify affected products, get mitigation recommendations, and take action accordingly. By using automated VEX generation, teams can also extract the actual exploitability of each vulnerability in the context of their specific devices. To learn more about this capability, contact us.

Key Takeaways

• New Vulnerability Impact: CVE-2022-33216 highlights a critical denial-of-service vulnerability affecting several Qualcomm automotive components, with potential high impact on vehicle security.
• Identification Challenges: Determining which automotive products are affected requires thorough analysis, often facilitated by tools that can handle complex software compositions and live SBOMs.
• Importance of Incident Response: Quick and effective incident response is crucial for mitigating the impact of new vulnerabilities, emphasizing the need for robust security management solutions.
• Cybellum’s Role: Cybellum’s Product Security Platform provides essential capabilities for early vulnerability detection, automated incident response, and precise identification of affected products.
• Future Readiness: Leveraging automated solutions and continuous monitoring helps ensure preparedness for emerging threats and enhances overall product security.