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CVE-2026-19740

Bluetooth LE Controller: retained RX node leak and reachable assertion in the PHY Update procedure

Products / packages zephyrproject zephyr

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Severity and exploitation

Not in CISA KEV

KEV coverage does not rule out exploitation.

KEV checked 14/11/2026, 23:40:32 UTC
zephyr · CVSS:3.1 · 6.5
Assessment vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Severity

medium6.5

CVSS measures technical severity, not the likelihood of an attack.

Known exploitation

Not listed in the checked CISA KEV catalog

Absence from CISA KEV does not rule out attacks.

Public exploit

Not established by this record

Missing evidence does not mean no public exploit exists.

Remediation

Fix status not established

No structured fix or guidance is available here. Check the latest publisher advisory.

What this means

Zephyr Bluetooth LE Controller versions 3.4.0 through 3.7.x and 4.4.0 are affected by a retained RX node leak, allowing a peer device to cause a controller assertion or silently leak receive PDU nodes, impacting availability. A peer device can exploit this via an established LE connection without pairing or encryption. The impact is limited to availability.

Summarized by @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast. Verify details against the original sources.

Attack conditions

No attack-condition excerpt has been identified here. Review the full source description and references for authentication, network access, and configuration requirements.

Review supporting sources →

Affected versions

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zephyrproject · zephyr

zephyr

2 ranges

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affected

3.4.0 → before 4.3.2

semver versions

4.4.0 → before 4.5.0

semver versions

unaffected

unknown

Other versions: unaffected

Automatic dependency matching is unavailable for this record. Use the product evidence and publisher’s instructions to check your installation.

What to do

Compare your installed product and version with the affected versions above. A matching product name alone does not confirm exposure.

No structured fix or remediation guidance is available here. Check the full source description and vendor’s latest advisory for a patch or workaround; do not assume another version is safe.

cve.new guidance unless attributed to a publisher. This page does not inspect your installation.

Public exploit evidence

No public exploit reference is identified in the imported evidence. This is not a claim that no exploit exists.

Original source description

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The Link Layer Control Procedure (LLCP) implementation of the Zephyr software Bluetooth LE Controller retains the receive node that carried an accepted LL_PHY_UPDATE_IND so that it can later be reused for the host notification when the update instant is reached (llcp_rx_node_retain() in subsys/bluetooth/controller/ll_sw/ull_llcp.c, and the node is deliberately not recycled while marked NODE_RX_TYPE_RETAIN). The invalid-PDU arms of llcp_lp_pu_rx() and llcp_rp_pu_rx() in subsys/bluetooth/controller/ll_sw/ull_llcp_phy.c completed the procedure via llcp_lr_complete() / llcp_rr_complete() without first releasing that retained node, so the procedure context — the only remaining reference to the node — was freed while the node was still held out of the receive pool.

A peer device on an established LE connection can drive this deterministically and without pairing or encryption. Against a peripheral it sends LL_PHY_REQ, receives LL_PHY_RSP, sends a valid LL_PHY_UPDATE_IND with an instant a few connection events in the future (so the node becomes retained), and then, before the instant is reached, sends any other LL Control PDU such as LL_LENGTH_REQ; ull_cp_rx() routes it to the active remote PHY Update procedure, which takes the invalid-PDU path. The mirror case applies to a locally initiated PHY Update followed by an LL_REJECT_IND.

In the default configuration (CONFIG_BT_ASSERT and CONFIG_BT_CTLR_ASSERT_DEBUG both default y) the violated invariant in llcp_lr_check_done() / llcp_rr_check_done() triggers a controller assertion, ending in k_oops() (or k_panic()) — a single crafted PDU sequence from radio range faults the device. With those assertions compiled out, each attempt silently leaks one receive PDU node and its memq link; because the controller receive pool is small (PDU_RX_CNT, driven by CONFIG_BT_CTLR_RX_BUFFERS, which defaults to 1) and each attempt costs the attacker only a reconnect, a few repetitions exhaust the pool and leave Bluetooth inoperable until reboot. On releases v3.4.0 through v3.7.x the assertion is never reached, whatever the configuration, so every attempt leaks silently.

The impact is limited to availability: the orphaned node leaves no dangling pointer that is later dereferenced and is never delivered to the host, so there is no memory corruption or information disclosure. The same pull request applies the identical release to the Connection Update and CIS-create procedures, whose invalid-PDU arms had the same omission.

References

2 sources

Inside the record

Evidence available

Package identity · not supplied
Version evidence
Remediation guidance · not supplied
Weakness classification
Additional publishers

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Original records

CVE-2026-19740

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Underlying weaknesses

The source’s classification of what caused the vulnerability.

Contributing organizations · 2
zephyr

Assigning organization

2026-11-04
CISA-ADP

Additional data publisher

2026-10-16

Timeline

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  1. Advisory published

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  2. Source updated

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  3. Last imported by cve.new

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What changed

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