Medium severity · published Aug 26, 2026
CVE-2026-13481
Out-of-bounds read in PTP management TLV TIME parsing in Zephyr net PTP
5.4
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
The IEEE 1588 PTP management-message parser in subsys/net/lib/ptp/tlv.c mishandles the PTP_MGMT_TIME management id. In tlv_mgmt_post_recv(), the PTP_MGMT_TIME case casts mgmt_tlv->data to a 10-byte struct ptp_timestamp and reads it (then byte-swaps and writes it back) without first checking that the TLV data field is at least sizeof(struct ptp_timestamp). Every sibling management id in the same switch validates its length first; PTP_MGMT_TIME was the only case lacking that check. The length passed in is the management data size (tlv->length - 2), and the upstream guard in ptp_tlv_post_recv() only requires tlv->length > 2, while msg_tlv_post_recv() validates only that the TLV fits within the received byte count, not a per-id minimum. A peer on the local PTP segment can therefore send a PTP_MSG_MANAGEMENT message carrying a short PTP_MGMT_TIME TLV (data as small as 2 bytes), causing the parser to read and write 8 bytes beyond the validated data. The message type and TLV contents are taken straight off the wire, so the path is reachable by any adjacent attacker when CONFIG_PTP is enabled. The over-read and write-back stay within the struct ptp_msg allocation (mgmt_tlv->data lives in the leading mtu[NET_ETH_MTU] union member, so data + 10 lands at most a few bytes past mtu[], inside the same object), so this is an out-of-bounds read of adjacent in-object memory plus a bounded in-place corruption of the message's parsed timestamp, not past-allocation memory corruption. Impact is limited to minor information exposure of adjacent bytes and corruption of the device's parsed management TIME value; there is no crash on the access and no reachable reference-count corruption. The fix adds if (length < sizeof(struct ptp_timestamp)) { return -EBADMSG; } before the cast, matching the other management-id cases and fully closing the receive-path defect.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N
Attack vector
Adjacent
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 16% 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, NVD
Affected product
ZE
zephyr
zephyrproject
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