Medium severity · published Aug 12, 2026
CVE-2026-12235
Out-of-bounds write in Xtensa llext PLT relocation from malformed ELF (CWE-787)
6.3
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
The Linkable Loadable Extensions (llext) subsystem mis-handles PLT/RELA relocation entries when linking a relocatable (partially-linked) ELF extension. In llext_link_plt() (subsys/llext/llext_link.c), the relocatable branch (tgt != NULL, the path used for Xtensa relocatable objects) computed the patch address as ext->mem[LLEXT_MEM_TEXT] - text.sh_offset + rela.r_offset + tgt->sh_offset and then performed the relocation write there without validating rela.r_offset. Its sibling shared/dynamic branch already rejected out-of-range offsets via llext_file_offset().
rela.r_offset is read directly from the ELF's RELA table, so a crafted entry with an offset larger than the target section makes the write land arbitrarily far outside the extension's text buffer. The result is an attacker-influenced out-of-bounds write (the location via r_offset, the written value being the resolved symbol address) performed in supervisor context at link time, before any extension code runs.
The path is reached from llext_load() whenever an application loads an attacker-influenced ELF extension on Xtensa with writable storage; llext is documented to accept extensions of untrusted origin. Impact is supervisor-context memory corruption (integrity and availability loss, and a sandbox-boundary escape for user-mode extensions). Exploitation is gated by the Xtensa relocatable PLT path and writable storage, and turning the out-of-range write into a useful primitive is non-trivial.
The fix adds a bound check rejecting any RELA entry whose r_offset >= tgt->sh_size, mirroring the existing validation in the shared branch.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
High
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.1% · higher than 3% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
ZE
zephyr · zephyrproject
3.7.0 before 4.4.2 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-12235
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-12235
github.com
https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/commit/106540afbd22087ad40b90f53fb22657754a719e
github.com
https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/security/advisories/GHSA-xv9q-6mrf-8j49
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