{"id":"CVE-2026-12999","state":"PUBLISHED","title":"Infineon Airoc Wi-Fi driver leaks TX buffers on send failure, leading to permanent pool exhaustion","description":"The Infineon Airoc Wi-Fi driver's transmit callback airoc_mgmt_send() in drivers/wifi/infineon/airoc_wifi.c allocates a net_buf from the fixed airoc_pool for every outbound packet. When whd_network_send_ethernet_data() returns a synchronous failure, the underlying WHD library does not take ownership of the buffer, but the pre-fix driver returned -EIO without releasing it. Each failed transmit therefore permanently leaks one buffer from the pool.\n\nairoc_pool is small and fixed (AIROC_WIFI_TX_PACKET_POOL_COUNT + AIROC_WIFI_RX_PACKET_POOL_COUNT, default 20 buffers) and is shared by WHD's whd_host_buffer_get callback for both transmit and receive. Once enough send failures have leaked the pool dry, airoc_wifi_host_buffer_get() returns WHD_BUFFER_ALLOC_FAIL for all subsequent allocations, so both transmit and the WHD-driven receive path fail and Wi-Fi connectivity is lost until the device is rebooted.\n\nThe leak occurs only on the transmit error path. A Wi-Fi-adjacent attacker can influence the conditions that cause synchronous send failures (for example by deauthenticating/disassociating the station while the local stack continues to attempt transmits), and ordinary transient failures over the device's lifetime accumulate toward the same state. Reliable on-demand triggering is of high complexity and the impact is availability-only, but the resulting denial of service is permanent and non-recoverable without a reboot.\n\nThe fix releases the buffer with airoc_wifi_buffer_release() on the failure branch, returning it to the pool. The commit also removes a redundant k_sem_give() in airoc_mgmt_disconnect(); because data->sema_common is a binary semaphore (limit 1) the duplicate give merely saturated at 1 and had no security impact.","publishedAt":"2026-08-22T20:35:40.445Z","updatedAt":"2026-08-25T19:07:22.689Z","severity":{"score":5.3,"label":"Medium","version":"3.1","vector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H","source":"zephyr"},"assigner":"zephyr","products":["zephyrproject zephyr"],"affected":[{"vendor":"zephyrproject","product":"zephyr","packageName":"zephyr","defaultStatus":"unaffected","versions":[{"version":"3.6.0","status":"affected","lessThan":"4.4.2","versionType":"semver"}],"collectionURL":"https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr","programFiles":["drivers/wifi/infineon/airoc_wifi.c"]}],"references":["https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/commit/4e6f624292ed153a762e98c7a297998c8d0b52c4","https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/security/advisories/GHSA-8w97-ghfm-5wjp"],"weaknesses":["CWE-401"],"ingestedAt":"2026-10-29T20:10:52.580Z","source":{"repository":"CVEProject/cvelistV5","path":"cves/2026/12xxx/CVE-2026-12999.json","commit":"556c9d3a8cd17e218bb8e452ba7cd619a384ff47"},"raw":{"dataType":"CVE_RECORD","dataVersion":"5.2","cveMetadata":{"cveId":"CVE-2026-12999","state":"PUBLISHED","datePublished":"2026-08-22T20:35:40.445Z","dateUpdated":"2026-08-25T19:07:22.689Z","assignerShortName":"zephyr","assignerOrgId":"e2e69745-5e70-4e92-8431-deb5529a81ad","dateReserved":"2026-06-23T13:18:10.190Z"},"containers":{"cna":{"title":"Infineon Airoc Wi-Fi driver leaks TX buffers on send failure, leading to permanent pool exhaustion","descriptions":[{"lang":"en","value":"The Infineon Airoc Wi-Fi driver's transmit callback airoc_mgmt_send() in drivers/wifi/infineon/airoc_wifi.c allocates a net_buf from the fixed airoc_pool for every outbound packet. When whd_network_send_ethernet_data() returns a synchronous failure, the underlying WHD library does not take ownership of the buffer, but the pre-fix driver returned -EIO without releasing it. Each failed transmit therefore permanently leaks one buffer from the pool.\n\nairoc_pool is small and fixed (AIROC_WIFI_TX_PACKET_POOL_COUNT + AIROC_WIFI_RX_PACKET_POOL_COUNT, default 20 buffers) and is shared by WHD's whd_host_buffer_get callback for both transmit and receive. Once enough send failures have leaked the pool dry, airoc_wifi_host_buffer_get() returns WHD_BUFFER_ALLOC_FAIL for all subsequent allocations, so both transmit and the WHD-driven receive path fail and Wi-Fi connectivity is lost until the device is rebooted.\n\nThe leak occurs only on the transmit error path. A Wi-Fi-adjacent attacker can influence the conditions that cause synchronous send failures (for example by deauthenticating/disassociating the station while the local stack continues to attempt transmits), and ordinary transient failures over the device's lifetime accumulate toward the same state. Reliable on-demand triggering is of high complexity and the impact is availability-only, but the resulting denial of service is permanent and non-recoverable without a reboot.\n\nThe fix releases the buffer with airoc_wifi_buffer_release() on the failure branch, returning it to the pool. The commit also removes a redundant k_sem_give() in airoc_mgmt_disconnect(); because data->sema_common is a binary semaphore (limit 1) the duplicate give merely saturated at 1 and had no security impact."}],"affected":[{"vendor":"zephyrproject","product":"zephyr","packageName":"zephyr","defaultStatus":"unaffected","versions":[{"version":"3.6.0","status":"affected","lessThan":"4.4.2","versionType":"semver"}],"collectionURL":"https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr","programFiles":["drivers/wifi/infineon/airoc_wifi.c"]}],"references":[{"url":"https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/commit/4e6f624292ed153a762e98c7a297998c8d0b52c4","name":"Fix commit","tags":["patch"]},{"url":"https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/security/advisories/GHSA-8w97-ghfm-5wjp","name":"GHSA-8w97-ghfm-5wjp"}],"metrics":[{"format":"CVSS","cvssV3_1":{"version":"3.1","vectorString":"CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H","baseScore":5.3,"baseSeverity":"MEDIUM"}}],"problemTypes":[{"descriptions":[{"cweId":"CWE-401","lang":"en","description":"dos","type":"CWE"}]}],"providerMetadata":{"shortName":"zephyr","orgId":"e2e69745-5e70-4e92-8431-deb5529a81ad","dateUpdated":"2026-08-22T20:35:40.445Z"},"x_generator":{"engine":"cvelib 1.8.0"}},"adp":[{"title":"CISA ADP Vulnrichment","metrics":[{"other":{"type":"ssvc","content":{"timestamp":"2026-08-25T19:07:13.318585Z","id":"CVE-2026-12999","options":[{"Exploitation":"none"},{"Automatable":"no"},{"Technical Impact":"partial"}],"role":"CISA Coordinator","version":"2.0.3"}}}],"providerMetadata":{"shortName":"CISA-ADP","orgId":"134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0","dateUpdated":"2026-08-25T19:07:22.689Z"}}]}}}