SEPTEMBER 18, 2026
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Case File

CVE-2026-13216

MEDIUM · CVSS 6.1 EPSS 0.18% Public Exploit

Source: NVD + CISA KEV + EPSS · Published 2026-08-25 · Last synced 2026-09-18

CyberRota Analysis

AI-Generated

The vulnerability exists in the virtio PCI driver, where insufficient validation of the device-supplied capability length allows for out-of-bounds writes to a stack buffer during driver initialization. This can lead to potential code execution or crashes if an untrusted virtio device is used, particularly in bare-metal or confidential computing environments. Organizations utilizing Zephyr in scenarios involving untrusted virtio devices should prioritize addressing this vulnerability to mitigate risks associated with malicious device interactions.

Public Exploit Signal

A public exploit, PoC, GitHub repository or Metasploit reference was detected for this CVE.

Detected Signals
exploit code execution

Note: these links are listed for security research and verification purposes only.

CVE
CVE-2026-13216
Severity
MEDIUM
CVSS
6.1
EPSS
0.18%

Original NVD Description

The virtio PCI driver (drivers/virtio/virtio_pci.c) parses a device's PCI capability list during driver initialization. In virtio_pci_read_cap() the device-supplied capability length byte cap_len (read from PCI config space via pcie_conf_read()) was only checked with assert(tmp.cap_len == cap_struct_size). That assert resolves to __ASSERT_NO_MSG(), gated by CONFIG_ASSERT, which defaults off in production builds, so the value reached the copy logic completely unvalidated. The length then drives a loop that copies extra capability dwords into a fixed-size stack buffer supplied by the caller. A cap_len below the 24-byte base struct virtio_pci_cap underflows the unsigned extra_data_words count to a near-SIZE_MAX value, producing an effectively unbounded stack write; a cap_len above the caller's buffer (up to 255) writes up to roughly 228 bytes of device-controlled data past the buffer. Both are out-of-bounds writes of attacker-controlled content executed in kernel mode during boot-time device probe. The input originates from the virtio device. In the common deployment where Zephyr runs as a guest under a hypervisor, the device backend is the host, which already fully outranks the guest, so the bug yields no privilege escalation. The exploitable case is a virtio device that is untrusted relative to the Zephyr kernel — an untrusted or physical/passthrough virtio PCIe device on a bare-metal system, or a confidential-computing posture where the guest must defend against the host — where a malicious device can corrupt the kernel stack and potentially achieve code execution or a crash. The fix replaces the compiled-out assert with a runtime range check rejecting cap_len outside [sizeof(struct virtio_pci_cap), cap_struct_size] before any arithmetic or copy.