Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-10646

High

Published: 28 June 2026

Published
28 June 2026
Modified
29 June 2026
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 7.4 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0026 16.8th percentile
Risk Priority 55 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-10646 is a high-severity Use After Free (CWE-416) vulnerability. Its CVSS base score is 7.4 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 16.8th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

Zephyr's BSD-sockets getaddrinfo() implementation (subsys/net/lib/sockets/getaddrinfo.c) passes a pointer to a stack-allocated state object (struct getaddrinfo_state ai_state) as the user_data of an asynchronous DNS resolver query. The socket layer waits on a semaphore with a timeout deliberately set slightly longer than…

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the resolver's own per-query timeout. When that semaphore wait nonetheless times out (-EAGAIN) - which can occur when the resolver's timeout work is delayed by workqueue contention, or in the documented multi-retry configuration where CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS_DNS_TIMEOUT exceeds CONFIG_NET_SOCKETS_DNS_BACKOFF_INTERVAL - the pre-fix code retries the query (goto again) without cancelling the previous one and without resetting the semaphore. The previous query slot remains active in the resolver with its callback and the stack pointer as user_data, and ai_state-dns_id is overwritten so the stale query can no longer be cancelled. A subsequent DNS response delivered over UDP and matched by its 16-bit transaction id (in dispatcher_cb()/dns_read()), or the resolver's own delayed query-timeout work, then invokes dns_resolve_cb() against the now out-of-scope stack frame, writing through the stale pointer (state-status, state-idx, state-ai_arr[], and k_sem_give()). Because the triggering response is network-delivered and its 16-bit id is spoofable/replayable by an on- or off-path attacker, this is a network-influenceable use-after-return that can corrupt reused stack memory, leading to crashes/denial of service or memory corruption. The fix cancels the timed-out query by name and type before retrying and resets the local semaphore, eliminating the stale callback path. Affected: Zephyr v4.0.0 through v4.4.0.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.
T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.
Why these techniques?

Network-delivered DNS responses directly trigger the use-after-return in the public-facing sockets/DNS resolver (T1190); exploitation produces memory corruption or application DoS (T1499.004).

Confidence: HIGH · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v19.0

Affected Assets

Mitigating Controls

Likely Mitigating Controls AI

Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.

addresses: CWE-416

Use-after-free exploits that achieve arbitrary code execution are blocked or significantly hardened by non-executable pages and ASLR.

References