CVE-2026-5857

HIGH

Contiki-NG MQTT Client Out-of-Bounds Write in PUBLISH Topic Parser via Persistent State Between TCP Segments

Title source: cna
STIX 2.1

Description

Contiki-NG's MQTT client parse_publish_vhdr() in os/net/app-layer/mqtt/mqtt.c sets topic_len_received=1 before checking topic_len against the 64-byte limit, so an over-length topic returns early but leaves the flag set. On the next TCP segment, tcp_input() re-invokes the parser with topic_received==0, and the persisted topic_len_received==1 skips the length-reading block containing the guard, falling through directly to a memcpy() that uses the unvalidated 16-bit topic_len as the copy length. The 65-byte topic[] destination overruns into adjacent struct fields including the payload_chunk pointer, which subsequent MQTT code dereferences, giving a compromised or attacker-controlled broker an arbitrary-pointer-write primitive. Contiki-NG's MQTT implementation has no TLS support so the connection is plaintext. Impact ranges from information disclosure and denial of service to remote code execution on embedded targets without memory protection.

Scores

CVSS v3 8.1
EPSS 0.0053
EPSS Percentile 42.0%
Attack Vector NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation none
Automatable yes
Technical Impact partial

Details

CWE
CWE-787
Status published
Products (1)
Contiki-NG/Contiki-NG < a34a2dbdc8bea784bd2ae5079aa4be520cd74f2d
Published Aug 06, 2026
Tracked Since Aug 07, 2026