Zephyr's IP socket recvmsg() implementation (subsys/net/lib/sockets/sockets_inet.c, insert_pktinfo()) validated the user-supplied ancillary (msg_control) buffer using only the payload length (msg-msg_controllen < pktinfo_len) before writing a full control message consisting of an aligned cmsg header plus the payload. Because the check omitted the cmsg header size, a control buffer whose length falls in the under-checked window (e.g. 16-27 bytes for IPv4 IP_PKTINFO on a 64-bit target, where a single element actually occupies 28 bytes) passes the guard yet causes a fixed-size out-of-bounds write of up to one cmsg header (~12 bytes) past the end of the buffer. Under CONFIG_USERSPACE the recvmsg verifier allocates a kernel-heap copy of the control buffer sized to msg_controllen and runs the implementation against it, so the overflow corrupts kernel heap memory and is triggerable from an unprivileged userspace thread; in supervisor mode it corrupts the caller's buffer. The path is reachable on a UDP/IP socket with IP_PKTINFO/IPV6_RECVPKTINFO (or hoplimit/timestamping) enabled when the application calls recvmsg() with an undersized control buffer and a datagram is received; part of the overwritten bytes (the destination IP in ipi_addr) is influenced by the received packet. The fix makes the capacity check use NET_CMSG_SPACE(pktinfo_len) (aligned header + aligned data) and returns -ENOMEM when the buffer is too small. Affected: v3.6.0 through v4.4.0.

Zephyr's IPv6 network stack can be prevented from receiving or processing future incoming packets by sending a small number of maliciously fragmented IPv6 packets. When such a packet is handled by the fragment-header processing path, the associated RX network packet buffer (allocated from a memory slab) is not released back to the pool. Repeating the malicious packet exhausts all RX buffer slots, after which the device can no longer obtain RX buffers and stops receiving traffic, resulting in a denial of service.

The Zephyr PL011 UART driver (drivers/serial/uart_pl011.c) contains an unbounded software loop in pl011_irq_tx_enable() that repeatedly invokes the interrupt-driven application callback while the TX interrupt mask bit (PL011_IMSC_TXIM) is set, to work around the controller's level-transition TX-interrupt behavior. When CTS hardware flow control is enabled (devicetree hw-flow-control or runtime UART_CFG_FLOW_CTRL_RTS_CTS) and the wired serial peer de-asserts CTS, the controller stops draining the TX FIFO; pl011_fifo_fill() then returns 0 on every call while the application still has pending data and therefore never disables the TX interrupt. The loop condition never clears, so the thread that called uart_irq_tx_enable() (e.g. h4_send() in the Bluetooth HCI H4 driver) spins indefinitely, hanging the executing context and stalling the transport — a denial of service (CWE-835). An attacker controlling the device attached to the UART's CTS line can trigger the hang by withholding CTS during transmission. Impact is availability only; there is no memory-safety, confidentiality, or integrity consequence. The vulnerable loop was introduced in commit b783bc8448ef (Feb 2025) and shipped in releases v4.1.0 through v4.4.0. The fix breaks out of the loop when CTS is blocking and arms the CTS modem-status interrupt to resume transmission when CTS re-asserts.

A missing length validation in the Zephyr Bluetooth Host ISO receive path can be triggered by malformed HCI ISO data. In bt_iso_recv() (subsys/bluetooth/host/iso.c), when processing PB=START/SINGLE fragments, the code pulls a TS SDU header (8 bytes, ts=1) or a non-TS SDU header (4 bytes, ts=0) without first verifying that buf->len contains at least that many bytes. The outer HCI ISO length check in hci_iso() validates payload length consistency but not the minimum inner SDU header size, so a packet with payload length 1 passes hci_iso() and then reaches net_buf_pull_mem(), which asserts buf->len >= len. As a result, malformed ISO traffic deterministically triggers a kernel assert (denial of service) in assert-enabled builds, and in non-assert builds the same path may proceed with an undersized buffer, leading to out-of-bounds read behavior. The issue affects products using the Zephyr Host with CONFIG_BT_ISO_RX enabled, particularly where incoming HCI data can be influenced by a malicious or compromised controller or malformed forwarded ISO traffic.

Zephyr's ext2 directory-entry parser does not fully validate on-disk directory entry structure before copying the entry name and advancing traversal state. In ext2_fetch_direntry() (subsys/fs/ext2/ext2_diskops.c), the code only checks de_name_len <= EXT2_MAX_FILE_NAME and then copies the name with memcpy without validating the structural relationship between de_rec_len, de_name_len, and the directory block boundary (for example that de_rec_len is non-zero, at least the size of the entry header, and that the record fits within the block). Callers such as find_dir_entry() and ext2_get_direntry() (subsys/fs/ext2/ext2_impl.c) then advance traversal using the unvalidated de_rec_len. A crafted ext2 image can therefore cause an out-of-bounds read from the directory block buffer when a malformed entry near the end of a block triggers an oversized name copy, or a zero-progress infinite loop when de_rec_len == 0. The issue is not reached at mount time but later through directory traversal paths such as pathname lookup, stat/open/unlink/rename, and readdir. The primary impact is denial of service and out-of-bounds reads under attacker-controlled ext2 images mounted from untrusted media.

A malformed Bluetooth Classic SDP attribute can trigger a reachable assertion in Zephyr's SDP parser. In subsys/bluetooth/host/classic/sdp.c, bt_sdp_parse_attribute() accepts an input buffer once it contains the 1-byte attribute type and 2-byte attribute id, but then unconditionally pulls an additional byte for the value type without verifying that the byte is present. A truncated 3-byte attribute (for example 09 00 09) therefore reaches net_buf_simple_pull() with insufficient remaining length, triggering the __ASSERT_NO_MSG(buf->len >= len) check and a kernel panic in assert-enabled builds (denial of service). In builds where assertions are disabled, parsing may continue past the end of the available buffer, leading to an out-of-bounds read and undefined behavior.

Zephyr's Bluetooth Classic Hands-Free Profile (HFP) Hands-Free role parser (subsys/bluetooth/host/classic/hfp_hf.c) contains an out-of-bounds write. During Service Level Connection setup the HF sends AT+CIND=? and parses the AG's +CIND: response in cind_handle(), which assigns a per-entry counter index and calls cind_handle_values() for each list element. cind_handle_values() then wrote hf-ind_table[index] = i without verifying that index is within the 20-element int8_t ind_table[] array of struct bt_hfp_hf. Because the parser places no cap on the number of +CIND: list entries, a remote Attendant Gateway (a malicious, compromised, or spoofed peer the device connects to over Bluetooth) can send a response with more than 20 recognized indicator entries and drive index arbitrarily large, writing a small attacker-positioned value past the array into adjacent struct fields (feature masks, SDP/version state, the calls[] array, work/atomic bookkeeping) and potentially beyond the static connection pool slot. This yields memory corruption and at least denial of service of the Bluetooth host, triggered by a single malformed AT response with no user interaction. The sibling consumer ag_indicator_handle_values() already performed the equivalent bounds check; this commit adds the same index = ARRAY_SIZE(hf-ind_table) guard to close the gap. Affects builds with CONFIG_BT_HFP_HF enabled; introduced with the original HFP HF CIND parser (~v1.7) and present through v4.4.0.

subsys/net/ip/ipv6_mld.c:mld_send() read the packet interface via net_pkt_iface(pkt) after net_send_data(pkt) returned successfully. Per the network stack's ownership contract (include/zephyr/net/net_core.h, and the explicit warning in subsys/net/ip/net_core.c:453-460 'do not use pkt after that call'), a successful send transfers ownership of the net_pkt and the L2 driver frees it (e.g. ethernet_send() unrefs the packet on success, subsys/net/l2/ethernet/ethernet.c:790), returning it to its k_mem_slab. The subsequent net_pkt_iface(pkt) is therefore a read of a freed object; the recovered interface pointer is then dereferenced and incremented by the per-interface statistics path (net_stats.h UPDATE_STAT/SET_STAT) when CONFIG_NET_STATISTICS_PER_INTERFACE is enabled. If the freed slot is concurrently reallocated, pkt-iface may read back as NULL (NULL-pointer dereference / crash) or as a stale/garbage pointer (stray increment write / memory corruption). The path is reachable remotely on the local link without authentication: handle_mld_query() (registered for NET_ICMPV6_MLD_QUERY) responds to a valid MLDv2 General Query (unspecified multicast address, hop limit 1) by calling send_mld_report() - mld_send(). The result is a remotely triggerable denial of service of the networking stack, with a narrow possibility of memory corruption. The fix caches the interface in a local before sending and no longer touches the packet after net_send_data(). The IPv4/IGMP sibling (igmp_send) already used the corrected pattern.

On Xtensa targets with CONFIG_USERSPACE and CONFIG_XTENSA_MMU, the page-table code (arch/xtensa/core/ptables.c) maintains a global list, xtensa_domain_list, of active memory domains using a list node embedded inside the caller-owned struct k_mem_domain. When a domain is destroyed via k_mem_domain_deinit() - arch_mem_domain_deinit(), the page tables are torn down and domain-arch.ptables is set to NULL, but the domain's node was not removed from xtensa_domain_list. The freed/deinitialized domain therefore remained linked into the global list as a dangling pointer into caller-owned storage that may then be freed or reused. Any subsequent arch_mem_map()/arch_mem_unmap() operation (widely invoked by kernel memory-mapping and demand-paging code) traverses the stale node and dereferences domain-ptables: at minimum a NULL pointer dereference causing a fatal MMU exception (denial of service), and if the k_mem_domain storage has been freed or reused, a use-after-free in which a stale/controlled ptables value is dereferenced and written through during the page-table walk (l2_page_table_map writes l1_table[...] and l2_table[...], and xtensa_mmu_compute_domain_regs writes into the domain struct and the L1 table), yielding page-table memory corruption that can undermine userspace isolation. The vulnerable path is reachable only from privileged kernel/supervisor code (k_mem_domain_deinit is not a syscall), not directly from unprivileged user threads or remotely. Affected: Zephyr v4.4.0 (the Xtensa memory-domain de-initialization feature was introduced in commit 3032b58f52d and first shipped in v4.4.0); fixed on main by adding sys_slist_find_and_remove() in arch_mem_domain_deinit(). The Xtensa MPU path is unaffected.

In Zephyr's native IPv4 stack, icmpv4_handle_echo_request() in subsys/net/ip/icmpv4.c builds an echo-reply packet (reply), hands it to net_try_send_data(), and then, on success, calls net_stats_update_icmp_sent(net_pkt_iface(reply)). net_try_send_data() transfers ownership of reply to the TX path (net_if_try_queue_tx - net_if_tx - L2/driver send, or the asynchronous net_if_tx_thread), which can unref it to refcount 0 and return the struct net_pkt to its slab (net_pkt_unref - k_mem_slab_free) before the stats line runs. net_core.c documents this exact contract ('the pkt might contain garbage already ... do not use pkt after that call'). The post-send net_pkt_iface(reply) therefore reads reply-iface out of a freed (and possibly already reallocated) net_pkt, a use-after-free read; with CONFIG_NET_STATISTICS_PER_INTERFACE the stats macro additionally increments a counter through that value, i.e. a dereference/write through a stale or recycled-slot pointer. The path is reached unauthenticated by any remote host that pings the device (net_icmpv4_input - net_icmp_call_ipv4_handlers - icmpv4_handle_echo_request) and is gated on CONFIG_NET_STATISTICS_ICMP. Impact is a probabilistic read of recycled packet memory plus a possible wild-pointer write under a timing race, leading most likely to corrupted interface statistics or a remotely triggerable crash (DoS). The defect was introduced in 2019 (v1.14) and is present through v4.4.0. The companion change in net_icmpv4_send_error() is not a use-after-free because it reads net_pkt_iface(orig), the caller-owned received packet, which stays alive across the send. The fix caches the interface pointer from the live received packet before sending and uses it for the post-send stats updates.