CVE-2026-10655 Use-after-free race in SNTP async client when closing the socket while the socket service is still polling it
An attacker can trigger a use-after-free race in the Zephyr RTOS SNTP client by delaying network responses, causing a denial of service or potential code execution.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2026-10655?
CVE-2026-10655 is a medium-severity use after free vulnerability in Zephyrproject Zephyr, published on 30 Jun 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
The asynchronous SNTP client in Zephyr (subsys/net/lib/sntp/sntp.c, sntp_close_async) closed the UDP socket file descriptor directly from the calling thread immediately after detaching it from the network socket service, without synchronizing with the socket-service poll thread.
The socket service thread polls each socket via zvfs_poll, which (in zsock_poll_prepare_ctx) registers a k_poll_event pointing into the socket's net_context (&ctx->recv_q) and then blocks in k_poll without holding a reference or lock. net_context objects are allocated from a fixed pool (contexts[CONFIG_NET_MAX_CONTEXTS]) and reused after close.
When sntp_close_async is invoked from a different thread than the poll thread (in the in-tree consumer subsys/net/lib/config/init_clock_sntp.c, the SNTP timeout handler runs on the system workqueue while the socket service thread is blocked in poll on the same fd), the close frees and may reuse the net_context while the poll thread still has a poller node linked into the freed object, resulting in a use-after-free / object confusion of kernel poll structures.
The SNTP timeout path is the normal no-response failure mode, so a network peer or off-path attacker who drops or delays the SNTP/NTP response can drive the racing close repeatedly (and periodically with NET_CONFIG_SNTP_INIT_RESYNC). The most likely consequence is a crash of the networking thread (denial of service), with potential memory corruption when the freed context slot is reallocated.
The fix defers the close to the socket service thread itself via net_socket_service_close (NET_SOCKET_SERVICE_CLOSE_SOCKETS), so the same thread that polls performs the close, eliminating the race. Affected releases: v4.2.0 through v4.4.0.
Weakness: CWE-416
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-10655?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Zephyrproject Zephyr.
How do I fix CVE-2026-10655?
No fix has been published for CVE-2026-10655 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.
Is CVE-2026-10655 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-10655 in the wild and no public exploit code.
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- CVE-2018-1000800 Null dereference in n/a
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Sources
Also known as GHSA-34wr-cg29-c4mw.