CVE-2026-16515
MediumCVSS 4.7Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk10th percentile - higher than 10% of all known CVEs
Summary
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.
Risk Assessment
The attack degrades availability of the shared link and of the reflection victim, and lets the attacker hide its own address behind the responding nodes. The effect is amplified on constrained mesh links such as 802.15.4/Thread, where link-local multicast is flooded hop by hop.
Recommendation
Update Zephyr to a version containing the fix that adds both suppression checks in net_icmpv6_send_error() before any reply packet is allocated, preserving the exceptions for NET_ICMPV6_PACKET_TOO_BIG and Parameter Problem Code 2. Note that the IPv4 counterpart net_icmpv4_send_error() still retains an equivalent gap for multicast destinations and non-unique sources.
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CVE-2026-10676 has been withdrawn as analysis determined that the reported defect is not reachable in any released version of Zephyr.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-2026-15924Medium
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-2026-14697Medium
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.
- 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_icmpv6_send_error() in subsys/net/ip/icmpv6.c implemented only one of the three RFC 4443 section 2.4 suppression rules (do not answer an ICMPv6 error with an ICMPv6 error). It did not check whether the triggering packet's source address identifies a single node (rule e.6) or whether the packet was sent to a multicast destination (rule e.3, whose only exceptions are Packet Too Big and Parameter Problem Code 2). Of the five call sites, only the port-unreachable path in subsys/net/ip/connection.c carried an equivalent guard of its own; the extension-header, unknown-next-header and fragmentation paths in subsys/net/ip/ipv6.c and subsys/net/ip/ipv6_fragment.c had none. An unauthenticated attacker with access to the same link can exploit this in two ways. Sending a single IPv6 packet to the link-local all-nodes group ff02::1 carrying an unrecognized next-header value, with the source address spoofed to a chosen victim, causes every Zephyr node on the link to emit an ICMPv6 Parameter Problem message to that victim — a reflector with an amplification factor equal to the number of nodes. Alternatively, sending a unicast packet whose source address is a multicast address causes the node to transmit its ICMPv6 error to that multicast address, turning one unicast packet into a link-flooded multicast frame. Packets addressed to ff02::1 are accepted unconditionally by ipv6_input(), and no check rejects a multicast source address, so no special configuration is required. The impact is degraded availability of the shared link and of the reflection victim, together with the ability for the attacker to hide its own address behind the responding nodes. The effect is amplified on constrained mesh links such as 802.15.4/Thread, where link-local multicast is flooded hop by hop. There is no memory-safety consequence: the error packet itself is well formed, it is simply emitted in cases where the protocol forbids it. The fix adds both suppression checks at the single choke point in net_icmpv6_send_error(), before any reply packet is allocated, preserving the RFC-mandated exceptions for NET_ICMPV6_PACKET_TOO_BIG and Parameter Problem Code 2. Note that the IPv4 counterpart net_icmpv4_send_error() in subsys/net/ip/icmpv4.c still checks only for a broadcast destination and retains an equivalent gap for multicast destinations and non-unique sources.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

