CVE-2026-10677CWE-401

CVE-2026-10677

Medium · published July 22, 2026

CVSS v3.1
6.5
EPSS
0%
Percentile
3.3
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

The CONFIG_USERSPACE syscall verifier z_vrfy_k_poll() in kernel/poll.c allocates a kernel-side copy of the user-supplied k_poll_event[] via z_thread_malloc() and then validates each event's object handle. Before this fix, validation used K_OOPS(K_SYSCALL_OBJ(...)) inline inside the loop, which kills the calling thread without freeing events_copy.

A user thread can pass num_events >= 1 with a forged object handle to leak the allocation; because newly spawned user threads inherit the parent's resource_pool (kernel/thread.c), an attacker spawns sacrificial threads to repeat the leak until the shared kernel heap is exhausted. Once depleted, legitimate kernel allocations from that pool (k_queue alloc nodes, k_msgq buffers, future k_poll calls, etc.) fail, causing a system-level denial of service.

The fix replaces each inline K_OOPS with a conditional goto oops_free so the buffer is freed before the thread is killed. Affects Zephyr releases from v1.12.0 (when k_poll was first exposed to user mode) through v4.4.1.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
6.5 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00143 · 3.3th percentile
Weakness
CWE-401 · Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime
Published
2026-07-22T02:16Z
Affected products (1)
ProductVersionsFixed in
zephyrproject/zephyr≥ 1.12.0, ≤ 4.4.1—
References (2)
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 21 JUL 21:30Z
    Kernel heap memory leak in `z_vrfy_k_poll()` lets an unprivileged user thread exhaust the kernel resource pool
    cvelistv5