CVE-2024-53980 Spoofed length byte traps CC2538 in endless loop

What is CVE-2024-53980?

CVE-2024-53980 is a medium-severity vulnerability in RIOT-OS RIOT, published on 29 Nov 2024.

Official description

RIOT is an open-source microcontroller operating system, designed to match the requirements of Internet of Things (IoT) devices and other embedded devices. A malicious actor can send a IEEE 802.15.4 packet with spoofed length byte and optionally spoofed FCS, which eventually results into an endless loop on a CC2538 as receiver. Before PR #20998, the receiver would check for the location of the CRC bit using the packet length byte by considering all 8 bits, instead of discarding bit 7, which is what the radio does. This then results into reading outside of the RX FIFO. Although it prints an error when attempting to read outside of the RX FIFO, it will continue doing this. This may lead to a discrepancy in the CRC check according to the firmware and the radio. If the CPU judges the CRC as correct and the radio is set to `AUTO_ACK`, when the packet requests and acknowledgment the CPU will go into the state `CC2538_STATE_TX_ACK`. However, if the radio judged the CRC as incorrect, it will not send an acknowledgment, and thus the `TXACKDONE` event will not fire. It will then never return to the state `CC2538_STATE_READY` since the baseband processing is still disabled. Then the CPU will be in an endless loop. Since setting to idle is not forced, it won't do it if the radio's state is not `CC2538_STATE_READY`. A fix has not yet been made.

Weakness: CWE-835

Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-53980?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Riot-Os Riot.

How do I fix CVE-2024-53980?

No fix has been published for CVE-2024-53980 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

Is CVE-2024-53980 being exploited?

It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2024-53980 exists.

Other vulnerabilities in RIOT-OS RIOT

• CVE-2024-32017 Buffer overflows in RIOT Critical 9.8
• CVE-2023-33975 RIOT-OS vulnerable to Out of Bounds Write in _rbuf_add Critical 9.8
• CVE-2023-24819 RIOT-OS vulnerable to Buffer Overflow during IPHC receive Critical 9.8
• CVE-2023-24823 RIOT-OS vulnerable to Packet Type Confusion during IPHC send Critical 9.8
• CVE-2021-27357 Memory corruption in n/a Critical 9.8

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as GHSA-m75q-8vj8-wppw.