Trusted Firmware-A

Skip to content What this pays sorona.xyz pays 1.25× the program's reward, up to +$1,000 per finding, plus a complexity bonus of up to $1,000 for especially complex or well-chained bugs. Finding │ Program pays │ Through sorona.xyz Critical (CVSS 9.0 - 10.0) │ $20,000 │ $21,000 High (CVSS 7.0 - 8.9) │ $10,000 │ $11,000 Medium (CVSS 4.0 - 6.9) │ $3,000 │ $3,750 Low (CVSS 0.1 - 3.9) │ $1,000 │ $1,250 Submit a vulnerability CVE history 4 Last 12 months 17 Lifetime Memory safety 35 % Access control 25 % Parsing/validation 20 % Info disclosure 15 % Latest advisories Loading the feed Overview Trusted Firmware-A is the reference EL3 secure-world firmware for essentially every 64-bit Arm application processor shipped in the last decade: the boot and runtime layer sitting beneath Linux, Android and the hypervisor on Qualcomm Snapdragon, MediaTek Dimensity, Samsung Exynos, NXP i.MX, Rockchip, NVIDIA Tegra, Ampere Altra and AWS Graviton parts. A bug here is an EL3 bug, which is above the kernel and above the hypervisor, the highest privilege level a software attacker can reach on an Arm SoC, and the project has published seventeen numbered security advisories to date, four of them carrying 2025 or 2026 identifiers. Arm Limited pays it on the Intigriti Trusted Firmware program, where every in-scope project shares one bounty tier running from $1,000 at the bottom to $20,000 for anything scoring CVSS 9.0 or above, and because all four assets are open source that top band is genuinely reachable from the repository rather than reserved for a hosted product. sorona.xyz adds 1.25× on top of whatever Arm awards, up to $1,000 more, plus a complexity bonus of up to $1,000 for a well-chained finding. In scope Arm's program names four Trusted Firmware projects and takes reports on all of them: TF-A, TF-M, OP-TEE and TF-PSA-Crypto. The live asset record describes TF-A as the reference implementation of secure world software for Armv8-A and Armv9-A class processors, and lists source-code review among the skills it wants. Reports run against the main branch or a currently supported LTS branch The whole boot chain TF-A owns: BL1, BL2 and BL2U, BL31, the handoff into BL32 and BL33, image loading, and the firmware-update (FWU) path The trusted board boot chain of trust: X.509 and certificate parsing, the crypto and image-parser module framework, and the non-volatile counters behind rollback protection EL3 Runtime Firmware as a whole: the SMC dispatcher, standard and SiP service dispatch, PSCI, SDEI, exception handling, and world context save and restore Secure and non-secure isolation across the Armv8-A and Armv9-A TrustZone boundary, including the dispatcher code that hands control to a secure payload or partition The Arm-owned platform surface, plat/arm/* and plat/common/* , together with the drivers TF-A carries for Arm reference platforms Speculative-execution and side-channel mitigations implemented at EL3 Out of scope Platform-specific code for non-Arm products: everything in the /plat directory except /platform/common/* and plat/arm/* . This is the exclusion that matters most here, because it removes every silicon-vendor port Test code, support tooling and anything the tree marks experimental, none of which counts as code intended for production deployment Attacks outside the project's threat model, and theoretical issues with no realistic exploit scenario Vulnerabilities in modifications or customisations of Trusted Firmware that do not exist in the official Trusted Firmware repositories, which rules out vendor forks Trusted Firmware projects the program does not list, which go to the Trusted Firmware incident handling process, and Trusted Firmware's web estate, which Linaro handles under its own disclosure process Physical access, glitching, DDoS and brute force, and devices that no longer receive security updates Findings Arm already knew about from its own testing, closed as duplicates, and zero-days reported within 14 days of a public patch, which are usually not paid Most-valued findings Memory corruption in the boot-image authentication path, especially the certificate and image parsing in BL1 and BL2. Memory safety is 35% of the advisory record here and an EL3 write is the CVSS 9-plus shape that reaches $20,000 A break in secure and non-secure isolation that lets normal-world software read or write secure memory, or influence EL3 state Argument-validation flaws in SMC, SiP, PSCI or SDEI dispatch where a non-secure caller reaches an EL3 pointer dereference or an out-of-bounds access Firmware-update handling that accepts an image the chain of trust should have rejected, giving persistent code execution at the highest privilege level on the part Speculative-execution or side-channel exposure of EL3 secrets where the mitigation TF-A implements can be shown to fail Any of the above demonstrated in plat/arm/* or plat/common/* rather than in a silicon-vendor port, which pays nothing however good the bug is Program rules Submit through sorona.xyz first. We validate, coordinate with the program's security team, and add the payout uplift on top of whatever it awards. A proof-of-concept demonstrating a full exploit chain is required, and it must be exploitable using existing supported platform code; virtualised platforms are acceptable for the demonstration The bug has to reproduce for Arm on either the main branch or a currently supported LTS branch, in code intended for production deployment Reports that state software is out of date or vulnerable without a proof-of-concept are closed, as are theoretical issues with no realistic exploit scenario Zero-days found within 14 days of the public release of a patch or mitigation may be reported but are usually not eligible for a bounty Reporters must be 18 or over, must clear sanctions screening, and must not be employed by a Trusted Firmware member company The program runs under the law of England and Wales, with jurisdiction in the London courts Disclosure Coordinated through Arm PSIRT and the TrustedFirmware.org security team, which publish a numbered TF-A advisory (TFV-n) once a fix has shipped. Arm's terms forbid discussing or disclosing vulnerability information, including proof-of-concept videos on YouTube or Vimeo, without prior written consent, so publication timing is Arm's call rather than a fixed clock. sorona.xyz holds your finding until the advisory is out. Safe harbor Sorona will not pursue legal action against you for good-faith research submitted to us in line with this policy. We cannot speak for the upstream project, its vendor, or any third party, and we do not grant authorization on their behalf. You are responsible for understanding and following the laws that apply to you, wherever you are, and for staying within any scope the project has defined. Submit a vulnerability