Live › vulnerability › CVE-2026-19595
Go to dashboardA thread with RTIO access can pass pointers it may only read, and the kernel writes through them in supervisor mode. That can overwrite read-only memory the thread's memory domain protects, or fault the kernel into a fatal error and halt or reboot the device.
Summary written from the sources below. Check the originals before acting.
First seen by InfraStack 2026-10-23 21:57 UTC. All times on this page are UTC.
Only Zephyr builds with user mode (CONFIG_USERSPACE) and the RTIO system memory block pool (CONFIG_RTIO_SYS_MEM_BLOCKS) enabled are exposed. The attacker must be an unprivileged user-mode thread that has been granted an RTIO context, so the risk sits inside a device's own software rather than from the network. Builds without user mode, or without the mempool configuration, can skip it.
No product ranges from the sources yet.
CONFIG_USERSPACE and CONFIG_RTIO_SYS_MEM_BLOCKS, for example with grep -E 'CONFIG_(USERSPACE|RTIO_SYS_MEM_BLOCKS)=y' prj.conf or the generated .configgit -C zephyr describe --tags and compare it against the fixed release named in the advisory (unknown in the sources)K_SYSCALL_MEMORY_READ() with K_SYSCALL_MEMORY_WRITE() for buff and buff_len in z_vrfy_rtio_cqe_get_mempool_buffer() (fixed version unknown in the sources)rtio_access_grant() where the feature is in useEach row is the first time that source carried this signal. The analyst’s rows are its own findings.
The user-mode syscall verifier z_vrfy_rtio_cqe_get_mempool_buffer() in subsys/rtio/rtio_syscalls.c validated its two output parameters, buff and buff_len, with K_SYSCALL_MEMORY_READ() rather than K_SYSCALL_MEMORY_WRITE(). Both are pure out-parameters: z_impl_rtio_cqe_get_mempool_buffer() stores the mempool buffer address and its length through them. The distinction is enforced by every architecture validator — arch_buffer_validate() on RISC-V PMP explicitly accepts the global __rom_region/__rodata_region for reads only, and the ARM MPU validators accept P_RO_U_RO and P_RW_U_RO regions for reads only — so a read-validated pointer is not necessarily writable by the calling thread.
An unprivileged user-mode thread that has been granted access to an RTIO context (rtio_access_grant()) can invoke the rtio_cqe_get_mempool_buffer() syscall with buff/buff_len pointing at memory it may read but not write, and with a completion-queue entry whose flags field it fully controls (only RTIO_CQE_FLAG_MEMPOOL_BUFFER in flags[7:0] is required; flags[19:8] and flags[31:20] supply the block index and count). The kernel then performs a pointer-sized and a 4-byte store through those addresses while running in supervisor mode. Reaching the store requires CONFIG_USERSPACE together with CONFIG_RTIO_SYS_MEM_BLOCKS, the configuration behind RTIO_DEFINE_WITH_MEMPOOL; without the latter the implementation returns -ENOTSUP and writes nothing.
Two outcomes follow. If the target lies in a memory-domain partition declared K_MEM_PARTITION_P_RW_U_RO (privileged read-write, user read-only), the kernel-mode store succeeds and deposits partly attacker-chosen values into memory the memory domain had marked read-only for that thread, bypassing the partition's write protection. If the target lies in globally readable but unwritable memory such as .text/.rodata in flash, the store faults in kernel mode; the fault is delivered to z_fatal_error() and the default k_sys_fatal_error_handler() halts or reboots the device, giving an unprivileged thread a reliable full denial of service.
The read-permission check does bound the damage: the address must still be readable by the calling thread, so kernel-private memory cannot be targeted and no confidential data is disclosed. The fix replaces both checks with K_SYSCALL_MEMORY_WRITE(), so a thread lacking write permission is terminated by K_OOPS before the implementation runs; the cqe argument correctly remains read-validated.
This page as .md · .json · in your agent: get_signal("CVE-2026-19595")
NVD data is provided by NIST and is public domain. Posts quoted belong to their authors.