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Unbounded TX busy-loop DoS in Zephyr PL011 UART driver under CTS hardware flow control

Type: advisorySource: Official CVE List1 source record

The Zephyr PL011 UART driver (drivers/serial/uart_pl011.c) contains an unbounded software loop in pl011_irq_tx_enable() that repeatedly invokes the interrupt-driven application callback while the TX interrupt mask bit (PL011_IMSC_TXIM) is set, to work around the controller's level-transition TX-interrupt behavior. When CTS hardware flow control is enabled (devicetree hw-flow-control or runtime UART_CFG_FLOW_CTRL_RTS_CTS) and the wired serial peer de-asserts CTS, the controller stops draining the TX FIFO; pl011_fifo_fill() then returns 0 on every call while the application still has pending data and therefore never disables the TX interrupt. The loop condition never clears, so the thread that called uart_irq_tx_enable() (e.g. h4_send() in the Bluetooth HCI H4 driver) spins indefinitely, hanging the executing context and stalling the transport — a denial of service (CWE-835). An attacker controlling the device attached to the UART's CTS line can trigger the hang by withholding CTS during transmission. Because that peer is the device wired to the UART — which may be a removable or external module (e.g. an off-board Bluetooth controller on the HCI H4 link) rather than a permanently-bonded on-PCB part — the attack vector is scored Adjacent (AV:A) rather than Physical; the security subcommittee should confirm the vector against the specific deployment. Impact is availability only; there is no memory-safety, confidentiality, or integrity consequence. The vulnerable loop was introduc

Announced Source revision 1
Original source ↗

CVE-2026-10642

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-2026-10642

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": "4.1.0",
        "lessThan": "4.3.1",
        "versionType": "semver"
      },
      {
        "status": "affected",
        "version": "4.4.0",
        "lessThan": "4.4.2",
        "versionType": "semver"
      }
    ],
    "packageName": "zephyr",
    "programFiles": [
      "drivers/serial/uart_pl011.c"
    ],
    "collectionURL": "https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr",
    "defaultStatus": "unaffected"
  }
]
Related CVEs
CVE-2026-10642

Source reference: /cveMetadata/cveId

Publisher severity

medium

Source reference: /containers/cna/metrics

Event
#30753 · Revision 1
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Publisher date
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