CVE-2026-18747
MediumCVSS 6.8Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk1th percentile - higher than 1% of all known CVEs
Summary
A vulnerability in the SMP-over-console transport in Zephyr RTOS allows an unauthenticated attacker to trigger a buffer length underflow by sending a single 7-byte frame to the management console. This leads to an out-of-bounds read, potentially causing a denial of service on the MCUmgr thread or memory disclosure.
Risk Assessment
An attacker with console access (e.g., USB CDC-ACM port) can remotely crash the system or access memory contents without authentication. The risk includes disruption of device operation and potential exposure of sensitive data.
Recommendation
Update Zephyr RTOS immediately to a version containing the fix that rejects declared packet lengths of two bytes or fewer in mcumgr_serial_extract_len(). If updating is not possible, restrict access to the management console to trusted users only.
Other vulnerabilities in Zephyr RTOS
See all- CVE-2026-19185High
A vulnerability was found in the system-call verifier for i3c_do_ccc() in Zephyr RTOS, which fails to validate per-target data pointers in the i3c_ccc_payload structure. The verifier also operates on the caller's live structure, allowing another thread to modify fields between check and use. This allows an unprivileged thread to write to arbitrary kernel addresses (via read CCC) or disclose kernel memory (via write CCC), leading to privilege escalation.
- CVE-2026-18417Medium
In Zephyr RTOS, a vulnerability exists in the BSD socket layer where an asynchronous error was stored in the user_data field of the network context, which for listening TCP sockets is used to store a pointer to the parent context. In v4.3.0, after an interface-down event, the accept callback was not disarmed, leading to reuse of the poisoned value as a pointer and writes to an invalid address, causing a kernel fatal error (device crash or reset).
- CVE-2026-16513High
A vulnerability in the RTIO syscall verifier in Zephyr RTOS (before v4.3.0) allows an unprivileged user thread to write a pointer to controlled data at an arbitrary kernel address. The missing K_SYSCALL_MEMORY_WRITE check for the handle output parameter enables privilege escalation to kernel mode.
- CVE-2026-16514Medium
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.
- 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.
Original NVD description (English source)
The MCUmgr SMP-over-console transport decodes a base64 frame, reads a 16-bit packet length from it, verifies a CRC and then unconditionally strips the trailing CRC with rx_ctxt->nb->len -= 2U; in mcumgr_serial_process_frag() (subsys/mgmt/mcumgr/transport/src/serial_util.c). mcumgr_serial_extract_len() accepted any declared length, including 0 and 1, and a packet declaring length 0 passes the checksum test for free because crc16_itu_t() over zero bytes returns the zero seed. Since net_buf::len is a uint16_t, the subtraction underflows and the buffer is handed to SMP claiming roughly 65 KB of payload while its data area is only CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_NETBUF_SIZE bytes (default 384). The trigger is a single unauthenticated 7-byte line on the management console — the 0x06 0x09 packet marker followed by the base64 group AAA= and a newline — delivered to any transport built on this helper: CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_UART (smp_uart.c) or CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_SHELL (smp_shell.c), both of which select MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_SERIAL_HAS_SMP_OVER_CONSOLE. No prior session state, fragmentation or credentials are required to trigger the underflow, and the malformed frame is mishandled before any command handler or command-level access control runs. The attacker only needs write access to that console, which on many boards is a USB CDC-ACM port rather than a bare UART header. With the inflated length, smp_process_request_packet() in subsys/mgmt/mcumgr/smp/src/smp.c loses its bound: cbor_nb_reader_init() gives the CBOR decoder a ~65 KB window into a 384-byte buffer, and each request header's nh_len is checked only against the inflated length. On its own the 7-byte frame re-parses whatever stale bytes the reused pool buffer still holds, typically a replay of the previously received request followed by a parse error, without leaving the buffer. Because the transport is unauthenticated, though, the attacker also controls the frames sent before the trigger, and can stage buffer contents so that a request succeeds with an nh_len larger than the buffer; net_buf_pull(), guarded only by __ASSERT_NO_MSG, then moves the parse cursor out of bounds and the loop reads further headers and CBOR from adjacent memory. The consequence is an out-of-bounds read that can fault the MCUmgr thread (denial of service); memory disclosure is also possible, since the default-enabled os echo handler (CONFIG_MCUMGR_GRP_OS_ECHO) decodes its string inside that window and copies it into its response. There is no integrity gain beyond what the unauthenticated transport already permits. The fix rejects any declared packet length of two bytes or fewer in mcumgr_serial_extract_len(), so the CRC-strip subtraction can no longer underflow. The identical pattern remains in the test-only loopback transport subsys/mgmt/mcumgr/transport/src/smp_dummy.c (CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_DUMMY), which has no external input path and therefore carries no practical exposure.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS