CVE-2026-19940: zephyrproject zephyr Use After Free

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-19940 is a medium (CVSS 6.5) Use After Free vulnerability in zephyrproject zephyr. EPSS estimates a 0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 13-10-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 14-10-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

The Bluetooth Classic Hands-Free Profile Audio Gateway implementation in subsys/bluetooth/host/classic/hfp_ag.c keeps its struct bt_hfp_ag objects in a static pool indexed by ACL connection index. On link teardown, hfp_ag_disconnected() cancels ag->tx_work and the per-call work items and then clears ag->acl_conn, which marks the pool slot as free — but it leaves ag->ongoing_call_work (and ag->slc_work) untouched. The next connection that lands on the same slot enters hfp_ag_create(), whose only occupancy test is ag->acl_conn, and immediately executes memset(ag, 0, sizeof(struct bt_hfp_ag)) followed by k_work_init_delayable(). Zeroing and re-initialising a k_work_delayable whose struct _timeout node is still linked into the kernel timeout list leaves the kernel holding a reference to a node with NULL prev/next links. ag->ongoing_call_work is armed by the remote peer: when a Hands-Free unit sends AT+CIND? during Service Level Connection establishment and the application provides the asynchronous get_ongoing_call callback, the AG schedules the work for CONFIG_BT_HFP_AG_GET_ONGOING_CALL_TIMEOUT milliseconds (default 10000). The timer is cancelled only if the application answers in time via bt_hfp_ag_ongoing_calls(). A peer that sends AT+CIND?, then disconnects the HFP RFCOMM DLC, then immediately re-opens it on the same ACL link, reuses the same pool slot deterministically while the timeout is still pending — the AG's RFCOMM server accept path (hfp_ag_accept()) calls hfp_ag_create() directly, so the remote side drives both teardown and re-creation. The result is corruption of the kernel's timeout list: sys_dlist_remove() on the zeroed node performs writes through NULL pointers from the clock-announce path, and rescheduling the re-initialised work re-inserts a node the list already references, creating a cycle that the announce loop walks with interrupts locked. The observable impact is a fault or hang of the whole system, i.e. a denial of service reachable from Bluetooth radio range; no attacker-controlled data is written, so this does not by itself yield code execution. Exposure is limited to builds with CONFIG_BT_HFP_AG (marked experimental and disabled by default) whose application implements the asynchronous get_ongoing_call callback.

• CWE-416Use After FreeThe product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.