CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-18746

MediumCVSS 5.9
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.25%

15th percentile - higher than 15% of all known CVEs

Summary

A vulnerability in the Zephyr LwM2M stack (subsys/net/lib/lwm2m/lwm2m_message_handling.c) causes a NULL pointer dereference when handling CoAP WRITE/CREATE requests with a Block1 option. An attacker can trigger a fourth block transfer after exhausting the block1_contexts pool (default 3), leading to a system crash (BusFault or reset).

Risk Assessment

The risk is a remote denial-of-service (device crash/reset) by an unauthenticated attacker with access to the UDP socket in NoSec deployments. Even accidental four concurrent transfers from a legitimate server can cause a reset.

Recommendation

Apply the vendor patch that moves the block size assignment after validating the context pointer. Additionally, consider increasing CONFIG_LWM2M_NUM_BLOCK1_CONTEXT or enabling DTLS if feasible.

Other vulnerabilities in Zephyr LwM2M

Original NVD description (English source)

parse_write_op() in subsys/net/lib/lwm2m/lwm2m_message_handling.c handles inbound CoAP WRITE/CREATE requests that carry a Block1 option. For the first block of a transfer it called init_block_ctx() and then immediately stored the peer-selected block size with block_ctx->ctx.block_size = block_size before inspecting the return code. init_block_ctx() sets the caller's pointer to NULL and returns -ENOMEM when no entry of the static block1_contexts[] pool is free or timed out, so that store dereferences a NULL pointer. The pool holds CONFIG_LWM2M_NUM_BLOCK1_CONTEXT entries (default 3) and an entry is only reclaimed once its transfer completes, fails, or ages past 30 seconds. A peer that reaches the client's LwM2M socket can therefore start three block-wise writes on three distinct object paths with the CoAP More bit set and leave them incomplete, then send the first block of a fourth write on a new path to reach the unguarded dereference. Reachability is gated only by the connected UDP socket's source-address filter unless CONFIG_LWM2M_DTLS_SUPPORT is enabled — which has no default — so in a NoSec deployment an on-path or address-spoofing attacker needs no credentials; the same sequence is also reachable from a bootstrap or lower-trust server, and can be hit accidentally by a legitimate server running four concurrent block transfers. The write targets a fixed low address with a value between 0 and 7, so the consequence is a fatal memory fault (BusFault or corrupted low memory leading to a fault) rather than a usable memory-corruption primitive: the device crashes or resets. Confidentiality and integrity are not affected. The fix moves the store below the guard and validates the context pointer itself instead of the return code, so the context is only touched once it is known to be valid.

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