The Zephyr net_buf library (lib/net_buf/buf.c) manipulated both of its reference counts -- the per-header buf->ref and the per-data-block ref_count at the start of each variable/heap data allocation -- with plain non-atomic C operators (buf->ref++, if (--buf->ref > 0), if (--(*ref_count))). The API is documented as self-synchronizing: callers may share one buffer across threads (e.g. via k_fifo) and each holder independently calls net_buf_unref() with no surrounding lock. Under true concurrency (SMP, or single-core preemption between the non-atomic load and store while another context unrefs the same buffer), two holders can both observe the same prior reference value and both conclude they are the last reference. For heap/variable-data pools (mem_pool_data_unref/heap_data_unref, used by zbus message subscribers, the IP stack RX/TX buffers when CONFIG_NET_BUF_FIXED_DATA_SIZE=n, capture, wireguard, ISO-TP and usbip) this produces a double k_heap_free()/k_free() of the same block -- heap-metadata corruption and a use-after-free on the heap-hardening poison pattern. For the per-header refcount the buffer is returned to the pool free LIFO twice for any pool type (including fixed-data pools used by Bluetooth and networking), corrupting the free list so a later allocation hands the same buffer to two owners. The fix converts both refcounts to atomic_inc/atomic_dec (overlaying buf->ref in an atomic_t-sized union and changing the data-block refcount from uint8_t to atomic_t). Impact is gated on genuine concurrency and on an application architecture that shares one buffer among multiple independent unref'ers; the trigger is a refcount/timing race rather than packet content, so an external attacker has at most weak indirect influence over the race window. Affects all Zephyr releases through v4.4.0.

The asynchronous SNTP client in Zephyr (subsys/net/lib/sntp/sntp.c, sntp_close_async) closed the UDP socket file descriptor directly from the calling thread immediately after detaching it from the network socket service, without synchronizing with the socket-service poll thread. The socket service thread polls each socket via zvfs_poll, which (in zsock_poll_prepare_ctx) registers a k_poll_event pointing into the socket's net_context (&ctx->recv_q) and then blocks in k_poll without holding a reference or lock. net_context objects are allocated from a fixed pool (contexts[CONFIG_NET_MAX_CONTEXTS]) and reused after close. When sntp_close_async is invoked from a different thread than the poll thread (in the in-tree consumer subsys/net/lib/config/init_clock_sntp.c, the SNTP timeout handler runs on the system workqueue while the socket service thread is blocked in poll on the same fd), the close frees and may reuse the net_context while the poll thread still has a poller node linked into the freed object, resulting in a use-after-free / object confusion of kernel poll structures. The SNTP timeout path is the normal no-response failure mode, so a network peer or off-path attacker who drops or delays the SNTP/NTP response can drive the racing close repeatedly (and periodically with NET_CONFIG_SNTP_INIT_RESYNC). The most likely consequence is a crash of the networking thread (denial of service), with potential memory corruption when the freed context slot is reallocated. The fix defers the close to the socket service thread itself via net_socket_service_close (NET_SOCKET_SERVICE_CLOSE_SOCKETS), so the same thread that polls performs the close, eliminating the race. Affected releases: v4.2.0 through v4.4.0.

The Zephyr Bluetooth controller ISO Adaptation Layer (subsys/bluetooth/controller/ll_sw/isoal.c) fails to validate the length field of a framed ISO PDU start segment. Per the Bluetooth specification a start segment (sc=0) always carries a 3-byte time_offset, so its segment-header len must be at least PDU_ISO_SEG_TIMEOFFSET_SIZE (3). isoal_check_seg_header() accepted start segments with len < 3 as valid, and isoal_rx_framed_consume() then computed length = seg_hdr->len - 3 in a uint8_t, underflowing to 253-255 when len is 0-2. That oversized length is passed to isoal_rx_append_to_sdu(), whose copy is clamped only against the destination SDU buffer size, not the source PDU length, so up to ~255 bytes of controller memory beyond the received PDU are copied (via sink_sdu_write_hci()/net_buf_add_mem) into an HCI ISO data packet and delivered to the host. The PDU and its segment headers are entirely attacker-controlled and arrive over the air, reachable through both the CIS and BIS-sync HCI data paths (hci_driver.c) and the vendor data path (ull_iso.c), so a remote CIS peer or a broadcaster the device is synced to can trigger an out-of-bounds read causing information disclosure to the host and potential denial of service (faults or malformed oversized HCI ISO packets). The flaw affects all Zephyr releases since framed ISO reception was introduced in v3.0.0. The fix rejects sc=0 segments with len < 3 in isoal_check_seg_header() and adds a guard before the subtraction in isoal_rx_framed_consume().

Zephyr's DNS resolver (subsys/net/lib/dns) parses resource records from DNS responses in dns_unpack_answer(), which validated only the fixed RR header (type, class, TTL, rdlength) and accepted any attacker-declared rdlength, including one extending past the end of the received datagram. The TXT and SRV consumers in dns_validate_record() (resolve.c) then read up to rdlength bytes (clamped only to a record-type maximum such as DNS_MAX_TEXT_SIZE, default 64, not to the packet) from the receive buffer via memcpy without their own bounds check, and pass the result to the application's resolve callback. A malicious or spoofed DNS server, an on-path attacker forging UDP DNS replies, or (with mDNS/LLMNR enabled) any LAN node can craft a truncated TXT or SRV response that causes an out-of-bounds read of adjacent receive-pool memory; the disclosed stale bytes (residual contents of prior DNS packets / uninitialized pool memory) are returned to the application as TXT/SRV record contents, an information leak, and may in some configurations cross the allocation boundary and fault, causing a denial of service. The read is bounded (~64 bytes for TXT, ~6 for SRV) and read-only (no write). The fix rejects any record whose declared rdata extends past dns_msg->msg_size at the single chokepoint in dns_unpack_answer(). Affected: v4.3.0 and v4.4.0.

A race condition in the Zephyr Bluetooth Classic RFCOMM host stack (subsys/bluetooth/host/classic/rfcomm.c) mishandles a simultaneous bidirectional session disconnect. When the local device has initiated a session teardown (state BT_RFCOMM_STATE_DISCONNECTING, DISC sent, RTX timer armed) and the connected peer concurrently sends its own DISC frame for dlci 0, rfcomm_handle_disc() invokes rfcomm_session_disconnected(), which unconditionally forced the session to BT_RFCOMM_STATE_DISCONNECTED without ever calling bt_l2cap_chan_disconnect(). Because the recovery timer was also cancelled and a later UA is ignored in the DISCONNECTED state, the session becomes permanently wedged: the underlying L2CAP channel is never released and the session slot in the fixed bt_rfcomm_pool[CONFIG_BT_MAX_CONN] array is never reclaimed (its conn pointer stays set). Subsequent bt_rfcomm_dlc_connect() calls on that connection fail with -EINVAL due to the invalid session state, so RFCOMM service is denied for that peer, and repeated occurrences can exhaust the session pool. The DISC frame is peer-controlled over the air, but exploitation requires the peer's DISC to collide with a local-initiated disconnect (a high-complexity timing race). Impact is availability/resource-leak only; there is no memory-safety, confidentiality, or integrity consequence. The defect shipped in released versions (present in v4.4.0 and earlier). The fix only transitions to DISCONNECTED when the session is not already in DISCONNECTING, preserving the proper L2CAP teardown path.

mcumgr_serial_process_frag() in subsys/mgmt/mcumgr/transport/src/serial_util.c calls net_buf_reset() on the result of smp_packet_alloc() before checking it for NULL. smp_packet_alloc() uses net_buf_alloc(K_NO_WAIT) against the shared MCUmgr packet pool (CONFIG_MCUMGR_TRANSPORT_NETBUF_COUNT, default 4), which returns NULL when the pool is exhausted. In default builds the __ASSERT_NO_MSG in net_buf_reset is a no-op, so net_buf_simple_reset writes through the NULL pointer (buf->len = 0; buf->data = buf->__buf), causing a fault/crash. The fragment data reaches this code from attacker-controlled bytes on the MCUmgr serial/UART/shell-console transports (smp_uart.c, smp_raw_uart.c, smp_shell.c), and a fresh buffer is allocated at the start of essentially every new packet. An attacker on the serial/console link can flood the transport to drive the 4-entry buffer pool to exhaustion and induce the NULL dereference, crashing the device (denial of service). The defect was introduced after the original MCUmgr rework and shipped in Zephyr v4.4.0. The fix moves the NULL check ahead of net_buf_reset.

The IPv6 Neighbor Discovery handlers in subsys/net/ip/ipv6_nbr.c (handle_ra_input, handle_ns_input, handle_na_input) used an incorrect boolean expression that combined the RFC 4861 validity checks with the ICMPv6 code check using the wrong operator precedence: the form was '((length/hop/source/target checks) && (icmp_hdr-code != 0))'. Because every legitimate ND message carries ICMPv6 code 0, an attacker setting code == 0 (the normal value) caused the entire predicate to evaluate false, so the packet was never dropped and all of the other checks were silently skipped. The bypassed checks include the mandatory Hop Limit == 255 verification (which proves an ND packet originated on-link and was not forwarded) and, for Router Advertisements, the requirement that the source be a link-local address, as well as multicast-target sanity checks. As a result, an adjacent on-link attacker — and, because the Hop-Limit-255 guard is bypassed, potentially a remote/off-link attacker whose packets would otherwise be rejected — can have forged Router Advertisement, Neighbor Solicitation, and Neighbor Advertisement messages accepted. A forged RA lets the attacker reconfigure the victim's default router, on-link prefixes (SLAAC), MTU, reachable/retransmit timers, and (with CONFIG_NET_IPV6_RA_RDNSS) DNS servers, while forged NS/NA enable neighbor-cache poisoning, enabling man-in-the-middle, traffic redirection, and denial of service. The flaw is an input-validation/authentication weakness rather than a memory-safety issue: the underlying packet-parsing primitives (net_pkt_get_data, net_pkt_read, net_pkt_skip) are independently bounds-safe and the validated 'length' is the true buffer length, so skipping the length check causes no out-of-bounds access. The defect has existed since the logic was introduced in 2018 and shipped in all releases through v4.4.0; it is fixed by splitting the condition so any failing check drops the packet.

Zephyr's HTTP server (subsys/net/lib/http) provides a static-filesystem resource type (HTTP_RESOURCE_TYPE_STATIC_FS, available when CONFIG_FILE_SYSTEM is enabled) that serves files from a configured root directory. Before this fix, both the HTTP/1 and HTTP/2 front-ends placed the raw, attacker-controlled request path into client-url_buffer (assembled in on_url() for HTTP/1 and copied verbatim from the :path pseudo-header for HTTP/2) without resolving ./.. segments. The static-FS handler then built the on-disk filename by directly concatenating the configured root with that raw URL (snprintk(fname, ..., "%s%s", static_fs_detail-fs_path, client-url_buffer) at http_server_http1.c:603 and http_server_http2.c:490) and opened it with fs_open(fname, FS_O_READ). Because the handler is reached via wildcard/leading-dir (fnmatch FNM_LEADING_DIR) or fallback resource matching, a request such as GET /<prefix/../../<file is dispatched to the handler and, after the underlying filesystem (e.g. LittleFS/FAT) resolves the .. segments, escapes the configured web root, letting an unauthenticated remote client read arbitrary readable files on the mounted volume (information disclosure). The HTTP server requires no TLS or authentication to reach this path. The fix adds http_server_remove_dot_segments(), which canonicalizes the path portion of the URL before resource lookup in both protocol handlers, neutralizing the traversal. Affects releases v4.0.0 through v4.4.0 for deployments that register a static-filesystem resource.

The USB CDC-NCM device class (subsys/usb/device_next/class/usbd_cdc_ncm.c) ignores the return value of usbd_ep_enqueue() in its ethernet transmit callback cdc_ncm_send(). When the enqueue fails, the function still calls k_sem_take(&data-sync_sem, K_FOREVER), blocking on a completion semaphore that is only ever signaled from the bulk-IN transfer-completion callback. Because nothing was enqueued, that callback never fires and the calling thread — a shared network traffic-class TX thread — deadlocks permanently while holding the interface TX lock, halting transmission until reboot (and leaking the transmit buffer). The enqueue fails under conditions controlled by the attached USB host: usbd_ep_enqueue() returns -EPERM whenever the bus is suspended (a standard, persistent host operation), and the underlying udc_ep_enqueue() returns -EPERM/-ENODEV on disconnect, bus reset, or endpoint disable. The cdc_ncm_send() guard only checks the DATA_IFACE_ENABLED and IFACE_UP flags, not the suspended state, so a packet transmitted while the host holds the bus suspended reaches the failing enqueue and deadlocks the TX path. The realistic trigger is a bus suspend that occurs while the exported network interface is active and has traffic to send — host sleep, USB selective/auto-suspend, or hub power management — after which any device-originated packet deadlocks the path, recoverable only by reboot. The impact is a persistent loss of the virtual network connection between the host's NCM interface and the Zephyr device; because the deadlocked thread is a shared traffic-class TX thread, egress on other network interfaces can stall as well. There is no memory corruption or information disclosure. The defect was introduced with the CDC-NCM driver and shipped in releases through v4.4.0; it is fixed by checking the usbd_ep_enqueue() return value and freeing the buffer before the blocking wait.

The Microchip SERCOM-G1 UART driver (drivers/serial/uart_mchp_sercom_g1.c), used by the PIC32CM-JH SoC family, contains an out-of-bounds write in its asynchronous (DMA) receive path. When uart_rx_enable() is invoked with a one-byte receive buffer (len == 1) and CONFIG_UART_MCHP_ASYNC is enabled, the RX-complete ISR starts a single-beat DMA transfer while a received byte is already pending in the SERCOM DATA register. On this SoC the peripheral-triggered DMA start sequencing then writes one byte past the end of the caller-supplied buffer (CWE-787). The overflowed byte's value is the UART RX data supplied by the connected serial peer (adjacent attacker), while its size and location are fixed at one byte immediately after the buffer. Exploitation requires the async UART config (not enabled by default on the in-tree PIC32CM-JH boards) and a consumer that enables RX with a one-byte buffer; impact is limited single-byte memory corruption adjacent to the RX buffer (possible crash / denial of service). The defect shipped in v4.4.0. The fix reads the first byte with the CPU and, for one-byte buffers, performs no DMA at all; for larger buffers it sizes the DMA for the remaining len-1 bytes.