CVE-2023-50926: Unvalidated DIO prefix info length in RPL-Lite in Contiki-NG

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2024-02-14 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-125

Description

Contiki-NG is an open-source, cross-platform operating system for Next-Generation IoT devices. An out-of-bounds read can be caused by an incoming DIO message when using the RPL-Lite implementation in the Contiki-NG operating system. More specifically, the prefix information of the DIO message contains a field that specifies the length of an IPv6 address prefix. The value of this field is not validated, which means that an attacker can set a value that is longer than the maximum prefix length. Subsequently, a memcmp function call that compares different prefixes can be called with a length argument that surpasses the boundary of the array allocated for the prefix, causing an out-of-bounds read. The problem has been patched in the "develop" branch of Contiki-NG, and is expected to be included in the next release. Users are advised to update as soon as they are able to or to manually apply the changes in Contiki-NG pull request #2721.

Affected products

contiki-ng: through 4.9

References

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