Zephyr Project up to 4.4.2 Espressif AES Driver crypto_esp32_aes.c aes_begin_session missing encryption

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in Zephyr Project Zephyr up to 4.4.2 and classified as problematic. This vulnerability affects the function aes_begin_session of the file drivers/crypto/crypto_esp32_aes.c of the component Espressif AES Driver. The manipulation results in missing encryption. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-82390. The attack may be performed from remote. There is no available exploit. Applying a patch is advised to resolve this issue.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as problematic has been found in Zephyr Project Zephyr up to 4.4.2. Affected is the function aes_begin_session of the file drivers/crypto/crypto_esp32_aes.c of the component Espressif AES Driver. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a missing encryption vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-311. The product does not encrypt sensitive or critical information before storage or transmission. This is going to have an impact on confidentiality. CVE summarizes:

The Espressif AES driver drivers/crypto/crypto_esp32_aes.c advertises a multi-session cipher API — it hands out up to CONFIG_ESP32_CRYPTO_AES_SESSIONS_MAX (default 4) independent sessions, each carrying its own key and direction. The AES peripheral, however, has a single chip-global set of key and mode registers, and aes_begin_session() programmed them exactly once, at session start, outside the aes_lock mutex that serialises the transforms. The per-operation handlers aes_ecb_op(), aes_cbc_op() and aes_ctr_op() then ran aes_hal_transform_block() against whatever key and direction the registers happened to hold. As a result, once a second session is opened with a different key, every subsequent operation on the first session silently uses the second session's key and direction, and no error is reported. Because the key programming happened outside the lock, the correct usage pattern of "each thread does begin, then op, then free on its own session" also races: a second thread's cipher_begin_session() landing between the first thread's begin and its operation makes that operation run under the second thread's key. An attacker who can induce session creation on the device — for example a protocol peer whose connection causes a session key to be installed — can influence which key is resident when a victim operation runs. The impact is a cryptographic failure rather than memory corruption: data the application believed it was protecting under one key is encrypted or decrypted under another. Where the resident key is one the attacker knows or supplied, the affected plaintext becomes recoverable by that attacker, and the operation's direction (encrypt versus decrypt) can likewise be inverted. Exposure requires an application that holds two or more concurrent sessions with different keys against this driver; no in-tree Zephyr subsystem does so today (the 802.15.4 security layer, which does open two sessions, uses CCM mode, which this driver rejects), so the risk falls on application code that uses the documented multi-session API. The fix removes all hardware access from aes_begin_session() and reprograms the key and direction at the top of every operation, inside aes_lock, so the chip-global registers can no longer be observed stale by another session.

The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2026-82390 since 08/28/2026. The exploitability is told to be difficult. It is possible to launch the attack remotely. The exploitation doesn't require any form of authentication. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1600.

Applying the patch cb4168ab3f6bd1bfc26060fd33cfcd00e8e641f1 is able to eliminate this problem.

VulDB is the best source for vulnerability data and more expert information about this specific topic.

Productinfo

Type

• Project Management Software

Vendor

• Zephyr Project

Name

• Zephyr

Version

• 4.4.0
• 4.4.1
• 4.4.2

CPE 2.3info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CPE 2.2info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CVSSv4info

CVSSv3info

CVSSv2info

Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Countermeasuresinfo

Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

VulDB is the best source for vulnerability data and more expert information about this specific topic.

Discussion