CVE-2026-9728TOCTOU race in mbox_send syscall verifier allows userspace to leak kernel memory
- 6.4MediumCVSS base score
- 0.11%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 99% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
Description
The userspace syscall verifier z_vrfy_mbox_send() in drivers/mbox/mbox_handlers.c validated the nested msg->data/msg->size fields by reading them directly out of live userspace memory, and then forwarded the original, still-mutable userspace struct mbox_msg * pointer to z_impl_mbox_send() and the underlying driver. Between the access check and the driver's use of msg->data, the validated pointer could be replaced, leaving a time-of-check/time-of-use window. On a system built with CONFIG_USERSPACE, any unprivileged userspace thread may invoke the mbox_send() system call. A second thread sharing the caller's address space can race to overwrite msg->data with a supervisor (kernel) address after the verifier's bounds check has passed but before the driver dereferences it. The driver then reads from the attacker-chosen address in supervisor context (for example memcpy(&data32, msg->data, msg->size) in the NXP mailbox driver, whose bytes are subsequently emitted to the peer mailbox endpoint). The impact is a userspace-to-supervisor access-control bypass: disclosure of kernel memory contents (high confidentiality impact), or, for an invalid/unmapped target address, a faulting kernel read causing denial of service. The fix snapshots the entire struct mbox_msg into a kernel-stack copy with k_usermode_from_copy() and validates and forwards that immutable copy, closing the race.
Timeline
ID reserved
By zephyr
- 3 months later
· 3 months later
Published
- 2 months later
· 2 months later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| zephyrCNA (assigner) | 3.1 | Medium6.4 | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:L |
| NVDNVD · Awaiting Analysis | 3.1 | Medium6.4 | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:L |
- EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
- 0.11% · top 99% of all CVEs (12 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 6.4.
Affected products
- affected 3.0.0 – < 4.3.2
- affected 4.4.0 – < 4.4.2
References
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-64897 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisories (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-9728)Record last updated .