Zephyr Project up to 4.4.2 Device Deinit kernel/device.c z_vrfy_device_deinit dev privileges management

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability classified as very critical was found in Zephyr Project Zephyr up to 4.4.2. Affected is the function z_vrfy_device_deinit of the file kernel/device.c of the component Device Deinit Handler. Executing a manipulation of the argument dev can lead to privileges management. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-19575. The attack can only be executed locally. There is no exploit available. Applying a patch is advised to resolve this issue.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Zephyr Project Zephyr up to 4.4.2. It has been declared as very critical. This vulnerability affects the function z_vrfy_device_deinit of the file kernel/device.c of the component Device Deinit Handler. The manipulation of the argument dev with an unknown input leads to a privileges management vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-269. The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

The user-mode verification handler for the device_deinit() system call, z_vrfy_device_deinit() in kernel/device.c, validated its dev argument with K_SYSCALL_OBJ_INIT(dev, K_OBJ_ANY). k_object_validate() short-circuits its type comparison when the requested type is K_OBJ_ANY, so the check reduced to "this pointer is the base address of some kernel object the calling thread has been granted" — the object's actual type was never compared, and K_SYSCALL_OBJ_INIT also skips the initialization-state check. The sibling handlers z_vrfy_device_init() and z_vrfy_device_is_ready() already used K_OBJ_DRIVER_ANY and were unaffected. A thread running in user mode can therefore pass any kernel object it holds permission on — most usefully a thread stack object obtained from the k_thread_stack_alloc() syscall or a statically defined K_THREAD_STACK it was granted in order to spawn a child user thread — whose backing memory is writable from user mode. z_impl_device_deinit() then interprets those attacker-written bytes as a struct device: it dereferences the state pointer read out of the object, calls the function pointer read out of ops.deinit, and on success writes through state again. The result is an indirect call to an arbitrary address executed in supervisor mode, plus an arbitrary kernel read and a single-byte kernel write. Exploitation gives a local unprivileged thread full kernel code execution, defeating the CONFIG_USERSPACE isolation boundary entirely; a less precise attempt yields a supervisor-mode fault and a system crash. The defect is only reachable in builds that enable both CONFIG_USERSPACE and CONFIG_DEVICE_DEINIT_SUPPORT — with de-initialization support disabled, z_impl_device_deinit() returns -ENOTSUP without ever dereferencing the pointer. In v4.2.x and v4.3.x, CONFIG_DEVICE_DEINIT_SUPPORT defaulted to y, so every CONFIG_USERSPACE build of those releases is exposed unless the option was explicitly turned off. From v4.4.0 the option is opt-in (no default, and not selected by any in-tree subsystem), so a v4.4.x build is exposed only if it enables the option explicitly. The v4.2 line is no longer maintained and receives no backport. The fix changes the object check to K_OBJ_DRIVER_ANY, which constrains the argument to the build-generated driver object type range (K_OBJ_DRIVER_FIRST..K_OBJ_DRIVER_LAST) — the real struct device instances placed by the linker — so the state and ops.deinit fields are once again kernel-controlled.

The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-19575 since 08/11/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack needs to be approached locally. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available. The current price for an exploit might be approx. USD $0-$5k (estimation calculated on 10/09/2026). The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1068.

Applying the patch 1036694889ab33996db41b4141ddf66aa786d267 is able to eliminate this problem.

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Productinfo

Type

• Project Management Software

Vendor

• Zephyr Project

Name

• Zephyr

Version

• 4.4.0
• 4.4.1
• 4.4.2

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