CVE-2022-41972 Contiki-NG contains NULL Pointer Dereference in BLE L2CAP module

Low 2.9 Published 16 Dec 2022 Updated 17 Apr 2025

An attacker can cause a denial of service in Contiki-NG IoT devices by sending a malicious Bluetooth Low Energy packet that triggers a NULL pointer dereference.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: None listed

What is CVE-2022-41972?

CVE-2022-41972 is a low-severity vulnerability in contiki-ng, published on 16 Dec 2022. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

Contiki-NG is an open-source, cross-platform operating system for Next-Generation IoT devices. Versions prior to 4.9 contain a NULL Pointer Dereference in BLE L2CAP module. The Contiki-NG operating system for IoT devices contains a Bluetooth Low Energy stack. An attacker can inject a packet in this stack, which causes the implementation to dereference a NULL pointer and triggers undefined behavior. More specifically, while processing the L2CAP protocol, the implementation maps an incoming channel ID to its metadata structure. In this structure, state information regarding credits is managed through calls to the function input_l2cap_credit in the module os/net/mac/ble/ble-l2cap.c. Unfortunately, the input_l2cap_credit function does not check that the metadata corresponding to the user-supplied channel ID actually exists, which can lead to the channel variable being set to NULL before a pointer dereferencing operation is performed. The vulnerability has been patched in the "develop" branch of Contiki-NG, and will be included in release 4.9. Users can apply the patch in Contiki-NG pull request #2253 as a workaround until the new package is released.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-41972?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Contiki-Ng Contiki-Ng.

How do I fix CVE-2022-41972?

No fix has been published for CVE-2022-41972 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

Is CVE-2022-41972 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-41972 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as GHSA-24xp-g5gf-6vvm.