VulnerabilityPublished 9 Nov 2026

CVE-2026-90591: zephyrproject zephyr · Memory-safety

Affects zephyrproject zephyrSource CVE Database V5

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.5 High : upgrade to 4.5.0 or 4.3.2 soon.

Data as of 9 Nov 2026, 22:18 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.5High

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

Thin evidence

One scorer or none

CVSS scores by source
CNA (zephyr)	CVSS 3.1	7.5

Patch: Available – fixed in 4.5.0, 4.3.2

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 9 Nov 2026
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 9 Nov 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade zephyrproject zephyr to 4.5.0 or 4.3.2.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
zephyrprojectzephyr	Affected >=4.4.0 <4.5.0	Fixed in 4.5.0
zephyrprojectzephyr	Affected >=4.2.0 <4.3.2	Fixed in 4.3.2
GitHubzephyr`pkg:github/zephyr`Other threats	Affected >=4.2.0 <4.3.2 >=4.4.0 <4.5.0	Fixed in 4.3.2 4.5.0

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

Description

The NXP ENET-QOS Ethernet driver's receive work handler eth_nxp_enet_qos_rx() in drivers/ethernet/eth_nxp_enet_qos hands each processed descriptor back to the DMA by writing desc->read.control = rx_desc_refresh_flags, which sets OWN_FLAG and BUF1_ADDR_VALID_FLAG. RDES0 of a receive descriptor is the DMA buffer address in read format, but the hardware write-back aliases that word with the VLAN tag fields (or, for a context descriptor, the timestamp low word), so it is destroyed on every completion. The success path rewrites desc->read.buf1_addr before re-arming; the four drop paths — errored or non-first descriptor, net_pkt_rx_alloc() failure, invalid descriptor length, and net_pkt_get_frag() failure — did not, re-arming the ring slot with the write-back residue as its DMA target address. The drop paths are driven entirely by received traffic and need no privilege or special configuration. With the defaults for this driver (CONFIG_NET_BUF_DATA_SIZE of 128 and 16 receive descriptors) a single full-size frame consumes twelve ring slots and twelve K_NO_WAIT fragment allocations, so a short burst of frames sent to the device exhausts the receive pools and reaches the allocation-failure paths; a frame with a receive error, or any frame whose first descriptor was already dropped, reaches the non-first-descriptor path. Once a slot has been poisoned, the DMA writes the next frame received in that slot to an address derived from the frame's VLAN tag fields rather than to a receive buffer. On the supported MCX SoCs that address falls in flash or reserved space, so the transfer raises a fatal bus error that the driver only logs — there is no reset or recovery path — and reception stops permanently until the device is rebooted; where the write is silently discarded instead, the untouched buffer is later handed to the network stack with a length, delivering stale buffer contents as if they were a received frame. A single triggering event is enough to make the condition persistent, so an attacker able to send traffic to the device can permanently disable its network interface.

References

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