Medium severity · published Oct 21, 2026
CVE-2026-19947
Missing kernel object permission check in devmux syscalls allows unprivileged user threads to retarget a device multiplexer
New
5.3
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
The device multiplexer pseudo-driver in drivers/misc/devmux/devmux.c exposes two system calls, devmux_select_get() and devmux_select_set(). When CONFIG_USERSPACE is enabled, their user-mode verifiers z_vrfy_devmux_select_get() and z_vrfy_devmux_select_set() forwarded directly to the kernel implementations without performing any kernel-object validation — no k_object_access_check() and no driver object check. Compounding this, DEVICE_DT_INST_DEFINE() registered devmux instances with a NULL driver API pointer, which causes scripts/build/gen_kobject_list.py to skip them entirely, so a devmux device had no struct k_object and no permission on it could be granted or withheld in the first place. Any thread running in user mode can reach the defect: device pointers such as DEVICE_DT_GET(DT_NODELABEL(devmux0)) are compile-time constants available to application code, and the syscall accepted them from a thread that had never been granted access to the device. The kernel implementations do validate the pointer against the static devmux instance table and bounds-check the selection index, so this is not a memory-safety issue; the failure is purely one of authorization. Exposure requires CONFIG_USERSPACE=y together with the experimental CONFIG_DEVMUX=y (which depends on CONFIG_DEVICE_MUTABLE) and a zephyr,devmux devicetree node. An unprivileged user-mode thread can read and change which downstream device a multiplexer forwards to, bypassing the userspace object-permission model. Because a devmux forwards the data, configuration and API of the selected device — its documented use being zephyr,console and zephyr,shell-uart switching — an attacker can suppress console, log and shell output, redirect that output to a downstream device it is able to observe, or flip the selection underneath another thread that is legitimately using the multiplexer. The impact is bounded to the devicetree-fixed set of downstream devices; no out-of-bounds access or arbitrary pointer dereference is reachable. The fix declares __subsystem struct devmux_driver_api and attaches a DEVICE_API(devmux, devmux_api) instance to each devmux device so that it becomes a tracked K_OBJ_DRIVER_DEVMUX kernel object, and adds K_OOPS(devmux_inst_get(dev) == SIZE_MAX) plus K_OOPS(k_object_access_check(dev) != 0) to both verifiers.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
Low
Availability
Low
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.1% · higher than 2% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
ZE
zephyr · zephyrproject
3.6.0 before 4.5.0 · source: vendor
Affected product
ZE
zephyr
zephyrproject
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