CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-10646

HighCVSS 7.4
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.32%

24th percentile - higher than 24% of all known CVEs

Summary

In Zephyr's BSD-sockets getaddrinfo() implementation, a use-after-return vulnerability occurs when a semaphore wait times out. The code retries the DNS query without canceling the previous one, leaving a stack pointer as user_data. A delayed DNS response or resolver timeout can overwrite stack memory, causing crashes or memory corruption.

Risk Assessment

A network attacker (on- or off-path) can send a crafted DNS response with a spoofed 16-bit transaction ID, triggering stack memory corruption. This can lead to denial of service (crash) or potentially arbitrary code execution in kernel context.

Recommendation

Immediately update Zephyr to a version later than 4.4.0, which includes the fix that cancels the pending DNS query before retrying and resets the semaphore. If updating is not possible, restrict DNS service access to trusted sources.

Other vulnerabilities in Zephyr

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

Zephyr's BSD-sockets getaddrinfo() implementation (subsys/net/lib/sockets/getaddrinfo.c) passes a pointer to a stack-allocated state object (struct getaddrinfo_state ai_state) as the user_data of an asynchronous DNS resolver query. The socket layer waits on a semaphore with a timeout deliberately set slightly longer than the resolver's own per-query timeout. When that semaphore wait nonetheless times out (-EAGAIN) - which can occur when the resolver's timeout work is delayed by workqueue contention, or in the documented multi-retry configuration where CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS_DNS_TIMEOUT exceeds CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS_DNS_BACKOFF_INTERVAL - the pre-fix code retries the query (goto again) without cancelling the previous one and without resetting the semaphore. The previous query slot remains active in the resolver with its callback and the stack pointer as user_data, and ai_state->dns_id is overwritten so the stale query can no longer be cancelled. A subsequent DNS response delivered over UDP and matched by its 16-bit transaction id (in dispatcher_cb()/dns_read()), or the resolver's own delayed query-timeout work, then invokes dns_resolve_cb() against the now out-of-scope stack frame, writing through the stale pointer (state->status, state->idx, state->ai_arr[], and k_sem_give()). Because the triggering response is network-delivered and its 16-bit id is spoofable/replayable by an on- or off-path attacker, this is a network-influenceable use-after-return that can corrupt reused stack memory, leading to crashes/denial of service or memory corruption. The fix cancels the timed-out query by name and type before retrying and resets the local semaphore, eliminating the stale callback path. Affected: Zephyr v4.0.0 through v4.4.0.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS