Medium severity · published Aug 24, 2026
CVE-2026-9728
TOCTOU race in mbox_send syscall verifier allows userspace to leak kernel memory
6.4
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
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.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:N/A:L
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
High
Privileges
Low
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
None
Availability
Low
Scope
Changed
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.1% · higher than 1% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
ZE
zephyr · zephyrproject
3.0.0 before 4.4.2 · source: vendor
Affected product
ZE
zephyr
zephyrproject
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