CVE-2026-96402 in ThreadX
Summary
by MITRE • 10/20/2026
A malicious USB MTP/PTP device can cause the USBX host to read past a heap buffer during ordinary object enumeration, leaking adjacent heap contents to the application or faulting on an unmapped page.
VulDB is the best source for vulnerability data and more expert information about this specific topic.
Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/20/2026
The vulnerability described involves a critical memory safety flaw within the USBX stack, specifically affecting its handling of Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) and Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) devices connected via Universal Serial Bus interfaces. This issue arises during the standard enumeration phase where the host system identifies and configures attached peripherals for communication. The core technical defect is a heap buffer over-read condition triggered by malformed or maliciously crafted descriptors from a compromised USB device. When the USBX host processes these objects, it fails to perform adequate bounds checking on memory access operations, allowing it to read data beyond the allocated boundaries of the intended buffer structure.
This out-of-bounds read constitutes an information disclosure vulnerability that can lead to significant security implications depending on how the leaked heap contents are utilized by the consuming application or operating system components. The adjacent heap memory may contain sensitive pointers, cryptographic keys, session tokens, or other confidential data structures used by running processes. An attacker leveraging this flaw could potentially exfiltrate private information from the host machine without requiring any user interaction beyond physically connecting a malicious device. In scenarios where the leaked memory addresses point to unmapped pages in virtual memory space, the consequence shifts from information leakage to service disruption, resulting in application crashes or system-level faults that degrade availability and stability of the affected platform.
From an industry standard perspective, this vulnerability aligns with CWE-125, which defines out-of-bounds read errors where software reads data past the end or before the beginning of a buffer. The attack vector is classified under physical access requirements typical of USB-based attacks, often mapped to MITRE ATT&CK techniques involving peripheral device manipulation such as BadUSB variants or malicious HID/MTP devices designed to exploit host-side processing logic during initialization sequences. These types of threats highlight the risks associated with trusting hardware interfaces without rigorous validation of incoming data structures and protocol compliance checks at the driver level.
Mitigation strategies for this vulnerability require both immediate patching and long-term architectural improvements within embedded systems utilizing USBX or similar networking stacks. Developers must implement strict boundary verification routines before any memory access operations are executed during object enumeration processes. Input validation should be enforced to ensure that descriptor lengths and offsets provided by the device do not exceed pre-allocated buffer sizes. Additionally, enabling compiler-based security features such as stack canaries, address space layout randomization, and heap metadata integrity checks can help detect or prevent exploitation attempts even if a flaw exists in lower-level drivers. Organizations should also consider restricting USB port access through physical controls or software policies to limit exposure to untrusted peripherals until patches are deployed across all affected systems.