Advisories

RIOT OS <= 2026.01-devel-317 Stack-Based Buffer Overflow in ethos Serial Frame Parser

Go Back
severity
medium
date
Affecting
  • RIOT OS <= 2026.01-devel-317

CWE
  • CWE-121 Stack-based Buffer Overflow
CVSS
6.8
CVSS V4 Vector
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:A/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Credit
Ron Edgerson
Description
RIOT OS versions up to and including 2026.01-devel-317 contain a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability in the ethos utility due to missing bounds checking when processing incoming serial frame data. The vulnerability occurs in the _handle_char() function, where incoming frame bytes are appended to a fixed-size stack buffer without verifying that the current write index remains within bounds. An attacker capable of sending crafted serial or TCP-framed input can cause the current write index to exceed the buffer size, resulting in a write past the end of the stack buffer. This condition leads to memory corruption and application crash.