Unbounded TX busy-loop DoS in Zephyr PL011 UART driver under CTS hardware flow control

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Summary

CVECVE-2026-10642
StatePUBLISHED
Assignerzephyr
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-06-24 22:16:46 UTC
Updated2026-06-25 18:58:28 UTC
DescriptionThe 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.

Risk And Classification

Primary CVSS: v3.1 6.5 MEDIUM from [email protected]

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

EPSS: 0.001750000 probability, percentile 0.071280000 (date 2026-06-25)

Problem Types: CWE-835 | CWE-835 dos | CWE-835 CWE-835 Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop')

VersionSourceTypeScoreSeverityVector
3.1[email protected]Secondary6.5MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
3.1CNACVSS6.5MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CVSS v3.1 Breakdown

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

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

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Zephyrproject Zephyr affected 4.1.0 4.5.0 semver Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/security/advisories/GHSA-3fgh-73jh-... [email protected] github.com
github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/commit/68e702294b711eadfe7b4fadedd4... [email protected] github.com
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