CVE-2023-24823: RIOT-OS vulnerable to Packet Type Confusion during IPHC send

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-04-24 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-787

Description

RIOT-OS, an operating system that supports Internet of Things devices, contains a network stack with the ability to process 6LoWPAN frames. Prior to version 2022.10, an attacker can send a crafted frame to the device resulting in a type confusion between IPv6 extension headers and a UDP header. This occurs while encoding a 6LoWPAN IPHC header. The type confusion manifests in an out of bounds write in the packet buffer. The overflow can be used to corrupt other packets and the allocator metadata. Corrupting a pointer will easily lead to denial of service. While carefully manipulating the allocator metadata gives an attacker the possibility to write data to arbitrary locations and thus execute arbitrary code. Version 2022.10 fixes this issue. As a workaround, apply the patches manually.

Affected products

RIOT-OS RIOT: before 2022.10 — fixed in 2022.10

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: RIOT-OS RIOT 2022.10. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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