Vulnerability · Published Jun 22, 2026 · Assigned by zephyr
CVE-2026-10645Out-of-bounds read in Zephyr ext2 directory entry traversal from a crafted filesystem image
Medium 4.9
In plain English
A medium-severity out-of-bounds read in zephyr from zephyrproject. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 5% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
The Zephyr ext2 filesystem driver (subsys/fs/ext2) trusted the on-disk directory entry fields de_rec_len and de_name_len when walking a directory block. ext2_fetch_direntry() guarded only with de_name_len > EXT2_MAX_FILE_NAME, but de_name_len is a uint8_t and EXT2_MAX_FILE_NAME is 255, so the check is always false; the function then memcpy'd up to 255 name bytes and the lookup/readdir paths advanced traversal by an unvalidated de_rec_len. Each directory block is read into a block_size-sized slab buffer, and block_off can be driven near the block end by preceding entries' rec_len, so the 8-byte header read and the subsequent name memcpy can read up to ~263 bytes past the end of the block buffer into adjacent heap/slab memory. On the readdir path those bytes are returned to the caller in fs_dirent.name, leaking adjacent kernel heap memory; a de_rec_len of 0 also causes a zero-progress infinite loop (denial of service), and the unlink path's memmove(de, next, next_reclen) over unvalidated records is an additional OOB read/write source. The defect is reached by any path-based operation (open, stat, unlink, rename, mkdir) or directory listing on a mounted ext2 volume, so a crafted or corrupted ext2 image on attacker-supplied storage (SD card, USB mass storage, or otherwise mounted image) triggers it. Affected: Zephyr ext2 from its introduction in v3.5.0 through v4.4.0. The fix validates rec_len and name_len in the parser and rejects entries whose header does not fit the remaining block or whose rec_len crosses the block boundary in every traversal caller.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu:22.04:LTS | zephyr | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-10645 |
| Ubuntu:24.04:LTS | zephyr | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-10645 |
| Ubuntu:25.10 | zephyr | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-10645 |
| Ubuntu:26.04:LTS | zephyr | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-10645 |
| Ubuntu:26.10 | zephyr | no fix listed | UBUNTU-CVE-2026-10645 |
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| zephyrproject | zephyr | 3.5.0 – before 4.6.0 |
Weakness: CWE-125 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:P/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:H