CVE-2026-14697
MediumCVSS 6.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk7th percentile - higher than 7% of all known CVEs
Summary
In the IPv6 subsystem of the Zephyr stack (subsys/net/ip/ipv6_nbr.c), the net_ipv6_send_ns() function allocates a transmit net_pkt for a Neighbor Solicitation. When called with a data packet pending on an unresolved neighbor and the neighbor's pending_queue is already non-empty, the function appends the data packet and returns early without sending the NS via net_send_data() or releasing it with net_pkt_unref(). The freshly allocated NS net_pkt and its attached TX buffers are held only by a local variable and are leaked permanently, never returning to CONFIG_NET_PKT_TX_COUNT / CONFIG_NET_BUF_TX_COUNT.
Risk Assessment
An on-link attacker can deterministically trigger the TX packet leak, exhausting the transmit packet pool (default only 4, 14 for Ethernet). Once exhausted, the node cannot send any packets (TCP/UDP, ARP/ND, or any reply), resulting in a complete and persistent denial of service that does not self-heal until reboot.
Recommendation
Apply the fix that releases the unsent NS packet with net_pkt_unref(pkt) before the early return. If the fix is unavailable, restrict trust in the local network and monitor TX packet pool usage.
Other vulnerabilities in Zephyr
See all- CVE-2026-10772Unknown
This CVE has been rejected as a duplicate. The described vulnerability involved incorrect permission checking in the Bluetooth GATT notify/indicate paths in the Zephyr stack, but was already reported as CVE-2026-2411.
- CVE-2026-10676Unknown
CVE-2026-10676 has been withdrawn as analysis determined that the reported defect is not reachable in any released version of Zephyr. In every supported release, the affected value is corrected before use.
- CVE-2026-5067Critical
Zephyr OS has a memory corruption vulnerability in the HTTP server WebSocket upgrade path. An unauthenticated remote attacker can trigger it by sending a crafted Sec-WebSocket-Key header. The bounded copy does not guarantee NUL termination, leading to out-of-bounds read/write on stack.
- CVE-2026-15890Medium
A vulnerability in the PSA Internal Trusted Storage module in Zephyr involves a lack of synchronization in nonce generation for AEAD encryption. The function secure_storage_its_transform_aead_get_nonce() uses unsynchronized function-local static variables, and concurrent writes to the same UID can lead to nonce reuse with the same key. This causes a catastrophic AEAD failure, enabling data leakage and forgery of stored entries.
- CVE-2026-17050Medium
The experimental USB host stack in Zephyr contains a double-free vulnerability in the configuration descriptor buffer. On three error paths, the buffer is freed but the pointer is left dangling, leading to a second free during cleanup. The vulnerability can be triggered by a malicious or malformed USB device.
- CVE-2026-16515Medium
The net_icmpv6_send_error() function in the Zephyr network stack implemented only one of the three RFC 4443 section 2.4 suppression rules, so it did not check whether the packet's source address identifies a single node or whether the packet was sent to a multicast destination. An unauthenticated attacker on the same link can send a single IPv6 packet to ff02::1 with a spoofed victim source, causing every Zephyr node to emit ICMPv6 Parameter Problem messages to that victim (reflection with amplification), or send a unicast packet with a multicast source address, turning it into a link-flooding multicast frame.
- CVE-2026-15924Medium
Zephyr's TLS socket layer (subsys/net/lib/sockets/sockets_tls.c) keeps a process-global client_cache array of cached client session buffers shared by every TLS socket, with access serialized only by the per-socket ctx->lock mutex. Because CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS_TLS_MAX_CLIENT_SESSION_COUNT defaults to 1, two concurrent client sockets contend for the same slot, causing a use-after-free read and a double-free when two saves evict the same entry. This corrupts the mbedTLS heap; the fix adds a dedicated session_cache_lock mutex taken across every accessor of client_cache.
- CVE-2026-15923Medium
The Zephyr SDIO subsystem has a vulnerability in sdio_io_rw_extended_helper() where func->cis.max_blk_size is decoded from the SDIO card without validation. If a card reports a maximum block size of zero, the transfer loop never terminates, causing a thread hang and permanent mutex lock, leading to denial of service for the SDIO peripheral.
- CVE-2026-15460Medium
A vulnerability in the Bluetooth Classic (BR/EDR) stack in Zephyr RTOS affects the L2CAP receive handler, which dispatches inbound data PDUs based only on the destination channel ID without verifying that the channel has reached the BT_L2CAP_CONNECTED state. An attacker within radio range can send data to a channel during connection setup, before configuration and authentication complete. This can lead to delivery of attacker data to upper-layer protocols on a half-open channel and to use of stale or partially initialized channel state, causing denial of service or a potential dangling-pointer condition.
- CVE-2026-13735Low
Zephyr's WireGuard implementation mishandled keepalive packets. A type-4 message with a 16-byte payload (empty plaintext plus Poly1305 tag) was accepted without tag verification because wg_process_data_message() returned early before calling wg_decrypt_packet(). An attacker could send a forged keepalive without knowing the session key.
Original NVD description (English source)
net_ipv6_send_ns() in subsys/net/ip/ipv6_nbr.c allocates a transmit net_pkt for a Neighbor Solicitation. When it is called with a data packet pending on an unresolved neighbor and that neighbor's pending_queue is already non-empty (an NS is already outstanding), the function appends the data packet and returns early without ever sending the NS via net_send_data() or releasing it with net_pkt_unref(). The freshly allocated NS net_pkt and its attached TX buffers are held only by a local variable and are leaked permanently, never returning to CONFIG_NET_PKT_TX_COUNT / CONFIG_NET_BUF_TX_COUNT. The leaking branch sits on the normal IPv6 transmit path: net_ipv6_prepare_for_send() (called from net_if.c) invokes net_ipv6_send_ns() for any outbound or forwarded IPv6 packet whose next hop is not yet in the neighbor cache. An on-link (adjacent) attacker can drive it deterministically by sending a burst of request packets (for example ICMPv6 echo requests or UDP datagrams) that all spoof a single non-existent on-link source address: the node generates a reply to each, the first reply queues an NS, and every subsequent reply during the roughly three-second INCOMPLETE resolution window takes the leaking branch and loses one TX packet. Router-configured nodes forwarding attacker traffic toward a non-existent on-link host leak identically. Because the leaked packets are never reclaimed and CONFIG_NET_PKT_TX_COUNT defaults to only 4 (14 for Ethernet), a brief low-rate burst exhausts the TX pool. Once exhausted the node can no longer allocate any transmit packet and cannot send TCP/UDP, ARP/ND, or any reply at all, producing a complete and persistent network denial of service that does not self-heal until reboot. The fix releases the unsent NS packet with net_pkt_unref(pkt) before the early return.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

