What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-46256: PX4-Autopilot Heap Buffer Overflow Bug

• Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2023-10-31 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-120

Description

PX4-Autopilot provides PX4 flight control solution for drones. In versions 1.14.0-rc1 and prior, PX4-Autopilot has a heap buffer overflow vulnerability in the parser function due to the absence of `parserbuf_index` value checking. A malfunction of the sensor device can cause a heap buffer overflow with leading unexpected drone behavior. Malicious applications can exploit the vulnerability even if device sensor malfunction does not occur. Up to the maximum value of an `unsigned int`, bytes sized data can be written to the heap memory area. As of time of publication, no fixed version is available.

Affected products

• PX4-Autopilot: through 1.13.3; 1.14.0-beta1, 1.14.0-beta2, 1.14.0-rc1

References

• https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot/blob/main/src/drivers/distance_sensor/lightware_laser_serial/parser.cpp#L87
• https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot/security/advisories/GHSA-5hvv-q2r5-rppw
• https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot/blob/main/src/drivers/distance_sensor/lightware_laser_serial/parser.cpp#L87
• https://github.com/PX4/PX4-Autopilot/security/advisories/GHSA-5hvv-q2r5-rppw

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