Off-by-one out-of-bounds NUL write in Zephyr LwM2M JSON string parser

Summary

CVECVE-2026-14368
StatePUBLISHED
Assignerzephyr
Source PriorityCVE Program / NVD first with legacy fallback
Published2026-08-31 19:16:45 UTC
Updated2026-09-01 15:17:11 UTC
DescriptionThe LwM2M JSON content formatter's get_string() in subsys/net/lib/lwm2m/lwm2m_rw_json.c copies a parsed JSON string into a caller-supplied buffer and NUL-terminates it. The length guard used if (string_length > buflen), which accepts a string whose length is exactly buflen. After memcpy() fills the whole buffer, buf[string_length] = '\0' then writes one byte past the end of the buffer (CWE-787). The string value and its length are taken directly from the incoming CoAP payload during a LwM2M WRITE: do_write_op_json() parses the payload obtained from coap_packet_get_payload(), and get_string() is invoked from lwm2m_write_handler() (engine_get_string() in subsys/net/lib/lwm2m/lwm2m_message_handling.c) for a LWM2M_RES_TYPE_STRING resource. The destination buf/buflen is either the resource instance's fixed data buffer (res_inst->data_ptr/max_data_len) or the engine validation buffer (msg->ctx->validate_buf). A LwM2M server (the client's DTLS peer) can therefore write a string resource with a value whose length equals the target buffer size and force a one-byte overflow. The overflow is a single out-of-bounds write of the constant byte 0x00 immediately past the resource or validation buffer, corrupting the adjacent byte in memory. It is not an information leak and the written value is fixed, so it is not a direct code-execution primitive, but it can corrupt adjacent state (an adjacent resource value, a length/flag field, or a struct field) and cause data corruption or a crash. Triggering the write is deterministic; the resulting impact depends on memory layout. The fix changes the guard to string_length >= buflen, rejecting the exact-length case and aligning the JSON formatter with the other content formatters (lwm2m_rw_plain_text.c, lwm2m_rw_oma_tlv.c, lwm2m_rw_senml_json.c, lwm2m_rw_cbor.c, lwm2m_rw_senml_cbor.c), which already used the correct boundary check.

Risk And Classification

Primary CVSS: v3.1 5.4 MEDIUM from [email protected]

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

EPSS: 0.002270000 probability, percentile 0.132780000 (date 2026-09-02)

Problem Types: CWE-193 | CWE-787 | CWE-787 bounds | CWE-193 bounds


VersionSourceTypeScoreSeverityVector
3.1[email protected]Secondary5.4MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L
3.1CNACVSS5.4MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L

CVSS v3.1 Breakdown

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

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

Vendor Declared Affected Products

SourceVendorProductVersionPlatforms
CNA Zephyrproject Zephyr affected 3.2.0 4.4.2 semver Not specified

References

ReferenceSourceLinkTags
github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/security/advisories/GHSA-vg53-h6qq-... 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0 github.com
github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/commit/ba38f4b94337cc2c2446277ac181... [email protected] github.com
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