Medium · published August 17, 2026
Zephyr's 6LoWPAN IP Header Compression (IPHC) uncompression code contains an out-of-bounds read in get_ihpc_inlined_size() (subsys/net/ip/6lo.c). The destination inline size is looked up in da_inline_size_table, which has 13 entries, using an index built from the M, DAC and DAM bits of the received IPHC dispatch word (iphc & NET_6LO_IPHC_DA_MASK, a 4-bit value of 0-15). The reserved combinations 13, 14 and 15 are not bounds-checked and read past the end of the table.
The iphc word is taken directly from the received frame, and get_ihpc_inlined_size() is reached on every inbound 6LoWPAN frame via net_6lo_uncompress() from the 802.15.4 receive path (subsys/net/l2/ieee802154/ieee802154_6lo.c and ieee802154_6lo_fragment.c). An unauthenticated attacker on the radio/adjacent link can therefore craft a frame whose destination addressing-mode nibble selects an out-of-range index, with no privileges or user interaction.
The out-of-bounds value becomes the computed inline_size, which then drives header reconstruction before the buffer-length check: it is used to dereference *(pkt->buffer->data + sizeof(iphc) + inline_size) and to compute a size_t diff that can underflow, leading to a further out-of-bounds read of the packet buffer and malformed uncompression. The practical impact is a radio-triggerable out-of-bounds read / denial-of-service on the receiver; the leaked byte is not returned to the attacker. The fix rejects any destination index beyond the table, aborting processing of the malformed frame.