AEAD nonce reuse in Zephyr secure_storage ITS default nonce provider due to missing thread synchronization
The default AEAD nonce provider for the PSA Internal Trusted Storage transform module, secure_storage_its_transform_aead_get_nonce() in subsys/secure_storage/src/its/transform/aead_get.c, stores its nonce counter in unsynchronized function-local static variables (s_nonce and s_nonce_initialized). Every ITS write obtains its AES-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305 nonce here via secure_storage_its_transform_to_store(). Because the function held no lock, two threads calling it concurrently race on the shared statics: the initialization path (psa_generate_random() followed by memcpy()) and the non-atomic increment-then-copy path can each hand the same nonce value to two distinct encryption operations, and can lose increments so the counter repeats values it was designed never to repeat. The ITS layer (secure_storage_its_set() in subsys/secure_storage/src/its/implementation.c) performs no serialization of its own, so concurrent same-UID writes reach the racy provider directly. Reusing a nonce with the same key under AES-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305 is a catastrophic AEAD failure: it leaks the XOR of the two plaintexts (ITS routinely stores secrets, including PSA persistent keys) and, for GCM, exposes the authentication key, enabling forgery of stored entries. Because the AEAD key is derived per entry UID, the security-relevant collision is two concurrent writes to the same UID both receiving the same nonce; an adversary able to read the raw backing storage can then exploit the reuse. Both ITS s
CVE-2026-15890
Primary source · Revision 1
Imported from structured advisory data. Source references identify upstream records or fields; verify affected versions and your deployed configuration.
Security context
Source reference: cve:CVE-2026-15890
zephyr
Source reference: /containers/cna/affected/0/product
- Affected versions
- Not stated in this record
- Fixed versions
- Not stated in this record
- Prerequisites
- Not stated in this record
Structured affected-version data
Original package identities and version rules from this source.
[
{
"vendor": "zephyrproject",
"product": "zephyr",
"versions": [
{
"status": "affected",
"version": "4.0.0",
"lessThan": "4.4.2",
"versionType": "semver"
}
],
"packageName": "zephyr",
"programFiles": [
"subsys/secure_storage/src/its/transform/aead_get.c"
],
"collectionURL": "https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr",
"defaultStatus": "unaffected",
"programRoutines": [
{
"name": "secure_storage_its_transform_aead_get_nonce"
}
]
}
]- Related CVEs
- CVE-2026-15890
Source reference:
/cveMetadata/cveId
Publisher severity
medium
Source reference: /containers/cna/metrics
- Event
- #32271 · Revision 1
- Added to Heist Feed
- Publisher date