CVE-2026-16514
MediumCVSS 4.3Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk15th percentile - higher than 15% of all known CVEs
Summary
The gptp_mi_qualify_announce() function in Zephyr's gPTP subsystem processes received Announce messages by comparing clock identities. The comparison loop uses an attacker-controlled step count (steps_removed) instead of the actual number of TLV entries, leading to an out-of-bounds read. A single frame can cause about 2KB of overread, potentially crashing the networking RX thread and causing denial of service.
Risk Assessment
Risk includes denial of service in deployments with the optional CONFIG_NET_GPTP module (TSN/AVB). The attack requires layer-2 adjacency but no authentication, potentially disrupting critical real-time systems.
Recommendation
Apply the fix that limits reads to the actual TLV entry count (tlv.len / 8). If not possible, disable CONFIG_NET_GPTP where it is not essential.
Other vulnerabilities in Zephyr RTOS
See all- CVE-2026-16512Low
The gptp_handle_msg() function in Zephyr RTOS does not validate the received frame length before dereferencing the gPTP header pointer. A truncated frame can lead to out-of-bounds reads, disclosing stale memory contents.
- CVE-2026-14696Medium
A vulnerability in Zephyr RTOS causes network buffer (net_pkt) leaks when Ethernet bridging is enabled (CONFIG_NET_ETHERNET_BRIDGE). Frames with unrecognized EtherType that are also delivered to the local stack are marked as NET_OK, which is interpreted as consumed, but they are never freed. An attacker on the L2 segment can flood broadcast/multicast frames with arbitrary EtherType, exhausting the RX buffer pool and causing a persistent denial of service until reboot.
- CVE-2026-13480Low
A vulnerability in the LoRaWAN TS004 Fragmented Data Block Transport handler frag_transport_package_callback() in Zephyr RTOS (subsys/lorawan/services/frag_transport.c) lacks validation of remaining payload bytes before each access. An attacker with session keys can cause an out-of-bounds read (up to ~232 bytes) past the RxPayload buffer, copying adjacent static memory into decoder buffers and the FUOTA flash image.
- CVE-2026-13213Medium
A vulnerability in the Hearing Access Service (HAS) in Zephyr RTOS allows a remote (Bluetooth) crash of the HAS peripheral. The issue occurs when a previously bonded client reconnects during the startup window before the application registers the service, leading to an assertion or NULL pointer dereference.
- CVE-2026-12633High
Vulnerability in IPv6 neighbor-discovery code (subsys/net/ip/ipv6_nbr.c) in Zephyr RTOS. The handle_ra_6co() function does not bound the context_len field from the 6CO option in Router Advertisements, leading to a buffer overflow and out-of-bounds memset. An attacker on the same link can send a crafted packet causing a system crash.
- CVE-2026-9771High
A vulnerability in the flash_copy() system call in Zephyr RTOS (with CONFIG_USERSPACE enabled) allows an unprivileged thread to pass forged pointers to flash device structures. Lack of device object validation (src_dev, dst_dev) before dereferencing enables arbitrary code execution in supervisor mode, leading to privilege escalation outside the userspace sandbox.
- CVE-2026-12364High
The vulnerability in Zephyr RTOS concerns the system-call verifier z_vrfy_z_log_msg_static_create(), which did not validate arguments passed to the kernel function. This allows an unprivileged user thread to supply arbitrary pointers and lengths, leading to kernel memory reads and system crashes.
- CVE-2026-12363Medium
The LoRaWAN Fragmented Data Block Transport service (frag_transport.c) does not validate the fragment counter in a received DATA_FRAGMENT command before forwarding it to the decoder. A frag_counter of 0 causes an underflow (frag_counter - 1), leading to an out-of-bounds write (CWE-787) in the default Semtech/LoRaMAC-node decoder, corrupting decoder state and disrupting the firmware-update (FUOTA) session.
- CVE-2026-12233Medium
The PSA Protected Storage credential backend (subsys/net/lib/tls_credentials/tls_credentials_trusted.c) declared its credential-store mutex as a plain zero-filled static struct k_mutex credential_lock; and never called k_mutex_init() on it. A statically zero-filled k_mutex has an uninitialized wait queue (its dlist head/tail are NULL instead of the self-referential sentinels that k_mutex_init/K_MUTEX_DEFINE install). The uncontended lock path does not touch the wait queue, so the defect is latent and serialized use behaves correctly.
- CVE-2026-11812Low
The vulnerability in the UpdateHub subsystem (subsys/mgmt/updatehub/updatehub.c) is due to unsynchronized access to the shared ctx structure. Concurrent operations (background autohandler and user-triggered calls) can write past the fds[1] array, overwriting adjacent struct fields, leading to internal state corruption and denial of service in the firmware update path.
Original NVD description (English source)
gptp_mi_qualify_announce() in subsys/net/l2/ethernet/gptp/gptp_mi.c walks the Path Trace TLV of a received IEEE 802.1AS Announce message, comparing each clock identity against the local one. The loop bound was taken solely from the attacker-controlled wire field announce->steps_removed (accepted up to 254), never from announce->tlv.len, which is the field that states how many identities the TLV actually carries. Because path_sequence is the flexible member of the wire TLV (struct gptp_path_trace_tlv) and GPTP_ANNOUNCE() yields a raw pointer into the received packet buffer, the memcmp() inside the loop can address memory well past the end of the received frame. The stack's only length validation, GPTP_ANNOUNCE_CHECK_LEN(), requires the received gPTP payload to be exactly 68 + tlv.len bytes — so it does not constrain the loop, it guarantees the data is absent. An unauthenticated attacker on the same Ethernet segment can send a single Announce frame declaring tlv.len = 0 with steps_removed = 254; the frame passes the length check and reception path (net_gptp_recv() → gptp_handle_msg() → gptp_mi_qualify_announce()), which performs no authentication, and the loop then reads 255 entries of 8 bytes each — about 2 KB — beyond the end of the network buffer. The impact is an out-of-bounds read. The bytes read are only used as a memcmp() operand and are never returned to the attacker, so there is no meaningful information disclosure; the practical risk is that the overread crosses a network buffer pool boundary into unmapped or MPU-protected memory and faults the networking RX thread, causing a denial of service. Exposure is limited to builds that enable the opt-in, experimental CONFIG_NET_GPTP (TSN/AVB deployments) and to attackers with layer-2 adjacency, since gPTP frames are sent to a link-local multicast address and are not routed. The fix computes the true entry count as tlv.len / GPTP_CLOCK_ID_LEN and rejects the announce when steps_removed + 1 exceeds it, so the loop can no longer run past the data the packet-length check proved present.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS