GHSA-x37p-38wq-cgwj: Bluetooth Mesh solicitation PDU stack buffer overflow via oversized advertisement
The Bluetooth Mesh On-Demand Private Proxy solicitation handler in subsys/bluetooth/mesh/solicitation.c copies a received Solicitation PDU into a fixed 17-byte stack buffer without bounding the source length. In solpdudecrypt(), out is allocated as NETBUFSIMPLE(17) and then filled with netbufsimpleaddmem(out, in->data, in->len); netbufsimpleadd() guards its tailroom only with ASSERTNOMSG, which is compiled out in production builds, so when in->len > 17 the underlying memcpy writes attacker-controlled bytes past the 17-byte stack buffer. The copy occurs before any decryption or authentication, so no key material is required to trigger it.
The oversized length arises because the mesh scan callback in subsys/bluetooth/mesh/adv.c calls netbufsimplerestore() before dispatching to btmeshsolrecv(), leaving buf->len covering the entire remaining advertising payload rather than just the Solicitation Service Data. After the parser locates the Service Data AD and consumes the Identification Type byte, the remaining buf->len is the 17-octet Network PDU plus any trailing advertising bytes, and prior to this fix there was no maximum-length check (only a minimum). An attacker can therefore append extra AD structures or padding after the Solicitation Service Data to make buf->len exceed 17.
btmeshscancb() is registered directly as the BLE scan callback, so buf is raw, unauthenticated advertising data received over the air. Any device in radio range can send a non-connectable advertisement carrying a crafted mesh Proxy Solicitation to a node that has CONFIGBTMESHODPRIVPROXYSRV enabled and is currently eligible to be solicited (GATT proxy disabled, On-Demand Private Proxy enabled), with no pairing, bonding, or provisioning. The result is an attacker-controlled stack overwrite — plausibly leading to remote code execution and at minimum a reliable remote denial of service. The fix trims buf->len to the spec-fixed 17 octets (dropping the PDU if fewer remain) before decryption.
Affected Software
Remediation
Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.
- Compensating control
Before decryption, limit the received Solicitation PDU buffer length to the spec-fixed 17 octets and drop the PDU if fewer than 17 octets remain; do not dispatch the entire remaining advertising payload to bt_mesh_sol_recv().