CVE-2026-17053 (GCVE-0-2026-17053)
Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-10-01 15:08 – Updated: 2026-10-01 16:03
VLAI
EPSS
VEX
Title
SMBus callback-removal syscalls accept an unvalidated user pointer, letting user threads manipulate kernel callback state
Summary
The SMBus driver API exposed smbus_smbalert_remove_cb() and smbus_host_notify_remove_cb() as Zephyr syscalls. Their verifiers in drivers/smbus/smbus_handlers.c validated only the dev argument with K_SYSCALL_OBJ(dev, K_OBJ_DRIVER_SMBUS) and forwarded the caller-supplied struct smbus_callback *cb pointer into kernel-mode driver code without any K_SYSCALL_MEMORY_READ/K_SYSCALL_MEMORY_WRITE validation. A companion change in 2023 had already removed the matching smbus_smbalert_set_cb() / smbus_host_notify_set_cb() syscalls for this reason, but the two removal syscalls were left exposed.
On a build with CONFIG_USERSPACE=y, CONFIG_SMBUS=y and a driver implementing the callback operations (drivers/smbus/intel_pch_smbus.c with CONFIG_SMBUS_INTEL_PCH_SMBALERT/CONFIG_SMBUS_INTEL_PCH_HOST_NOTIFY, or drivers/smbus/smbus_stm32.c with CONFIG_SMBUS_STM32_SMBALERT), any user-mode thread that has been granted the SMBus device object can invoke these syscalls with an arbitrary pointer. The value reaches smbus_callback_remove() in drivers/smbus/smbus_utils.h, which uses it as a node identity against the kernel's sys_slist_t of registered callbacks.
The consequence is that an unprivileged thread can unregister an SMBALERT or Host Notify callback that a supervisor-mode component registered, silently disabling alert handling for the rest of the system; because Zephyr images have fixed symbol addresses and the syscall returns 0 on a hit versus -ENOENT on a miss, the target address is both derivable and searchable. In builds with CONFIG_ASSERT=y the __ASSERT(callback->handler, ...) check additionally dereferences the caller-supplied address in supervisor mode, so a bogus pointer raises a kernel-mode fault and a fatal system error, and the fault/no-fault outcome discloses which addresses are mapped.
The fix removes both syscall entry points, demoting the two functions to ordinary static inline calls so that callback list manipulation is available only to supervisor-mode code. There is no impact on builds without CONFIG_USERSPACE, and no impact on configurations that do not enable an SMBus driver with SMBALERT or Host Notify support.
Severity
4.4 (Medium)
SSVC
Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical Impact: partial
CISA Coordinator · CISA-ADP (v2.0.3)
Decision recorded 2026-10-01 16:03 UTC
CWE
- CWE-862 - auth
Assigner
References
2 references
Impacted products
1 product
| Vendor | Product | Version | |
|---|---|---|---|
| zephyrproject | zephyr |
Affected:
3.4.0 , < 4.4.2
(semver)
|
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Experimental. This forecast is provided for visualization only and may change without notice. Do not use it for operational decisions.
Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.
Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
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The MITRE ATT&CK techniques below are AI-generated suggestions, inferred from the description of the
vulnerability by the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-classification-roberta-base
model, served locally by ML-Gateway.
They have not been verified by an analyst and are provided for guidance only.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
The approach is described in our paper Mapping CVEs to MITRE ATT&CK Techniques: A Curated Gold-Set Classifier and the Limits of LLM-Assisted Label Expansion.
Browse all ATT&CK techniques and the vulnerabilities related to each.
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