CVE-2026-15449: illumos illumos-gate Heap-based Buffer Overflow

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-15449 is a medium (CVSS 5.8) Heap-based Buffer Overflow vulnerability in illumos illumos-gate. EPSS estimates a 0.12% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 1.5% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 16-07-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 17-07-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

A time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) flaw in the illumos data-link pseudo-driver (dld) affects handling of the DLDIOC_GETMACPROP and DLDIOC_SETMACPROP ioctls on /dev/dld. drv_ioc_prop_common() in usr/src/uts/common/io/dld/dld_drv.c copies the dld_ioc_macprop_t ioctl header in once to read its pr_valsize field, sizes and allocates a kernel heap buffer from that value, and then copies the full request in a second time from the same unprivileged user address. A concurrent thread can enlarge pr_valsize between the two copyins, so the second copyin and the subsequent property handling write beyond the end of the undersized allocation and corrupt the kernel heap. An unprivileged local user, including one confined to a non-global zone that owns a datalink, can trigger this to panic the system. The resulting kernel heap corruption may be usable for further compromise.

• CWE-122Heap-based Buffer OverflowA heap overflow condition is a buffer overflow, where the buffer that can be overwritten is allocated in the heap portion of memory, generally meaning that the buffer was allocated using a routine such as malloc().
• CWE-367Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race ConditionThe product checks the state of a resource before using that resource, but the resource's state can change between the check and the use in a way that invalidates the results of the check.