Infineon Airoc Wi-Fi driver leaks TX buffers on send failure, leading to permanent pool exhaustion
Summary
| CVE | CVE-2026-12999 |
|---|---|
| State | PUBLISHED |
| Assigner | zephyr |
| Source Priority | CVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback |
| Published | 2026-08-22 21:16:48 UTC |
| Updated | 2026-08-26 16:59:23 UTC |
| Description | The Infineon Airoc Wi-Fi driver's transmit callback airoc_mgmt_send() in drivers/wifi/infineon/airoc_wifi.c allocates a net_buf from the fixed airoc_pool for every outbound packet. When whd_network_send_ethernet_data() returns a synchronous failure, the underlying WHD library does not take ownership of the buffer, but the pre-fix driver returned -EIO without releasing it. Each failed transmit therefore permanently leaks one buffer from the pool. airoc_pool is small and fixed (AIROC_WIFI_TX_PACKET_POOL_COUNT + AIROC_WIFI_RX_PACKET_POOL_COUNT, default 20 buffers) and is shared by WHD's whd_host_buffer_get callback for both transmit and receive. Once enough send failures have leaked the pool dry, airoc_wifi_host_buffer_get() returns WHD_BUFFER_ALLOC_FAIL for all subsequent allocations, so both transmit and the WHD-driven receive path fail and Wi-Fi connectivity is lost until the device is rebooted. The leak occurs only on the transmit error path. A Wi-Fi-adjacent attacker can influence the conditions that cause synchronous send failures (for example by deauthenticating/disassociating the station while the local stack continues to attempt transmits), and ordinary transient failures over the device's lifetime accumulate toward the same state. Reliable on-demand triggering is of high complexity and the impact is availability-only, but the resulting denial of service is permanent and non-recoverable without a reboot. The fix releases the buffer with airoc_wifi_buffer_release() on the failure branch, returning it to the pool. The commit also removes a redundant k_sem_give() in airoc_mgmt_disconnect(); because data->sema_common is a binary semaphore (limit 1) the duplicate give merely saturated at 1 and had no security impact. |
Risk And Classification
Primary CVSS: v3.1 5.3 MEDIUM from [email protected]
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS: 0.001590000 probability, percentile 0.053510000 (date 2026-08-27)
Problem Types: CWE-401 | CWE-401 dos
| Version | Source | Type | Score | Severity | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3.1 | [email protected] | Secondary | 5.3 | MEDIUM | CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
| 3.1 | CNA | CVSS | 5.3 | MEDIUM | CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H |
CVSS v3.1 Breakdown
Attack Vector
AdjacentAttack Complexity
HighPrivileges Required
NoneUser Interaction
NoneScope
UnchangedConfidentiality
NoneIntegrity
NoneAvailability
HighCVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Vendor Declared Affected Products
| Source | Vendor | Product | Version | Platforms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CNA | Zephyrproject | Zephyr | affected 3.6.0 4.4.2 semver | Not specified |
References
| Reference | Source | Link | Tags |
|---|---|---|---|
| github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/commit/4e6f624292ed153a762e98c7a297... | [email protected] | github.com | |
| github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/security/advisories/GHSA-8w97-ghfm-... | [email protected] | github.com | |
| CVE Program record | CVE.ORG | www.cve.org | canonical |
| NVD vulnerability detail | NVD | nvd.nist.gov | canonical, analysis |
No vendor comments have been submitted for this CVE.
There are currently no legacy QID mappings associated with this CVE.