rela.r_offset is read directly from the ELF's RELA table, so a crafted entry with an offset larger than the target section makes the write land arbitrarily far outside the extension's text buffer. The result is an attacker-influenced out-of-bounds write (the location via r_offset, the written value being the resolved symbol address) performed in supervisor context at link time, before any extension code runs.
The path is reached from llext_load() whenever an application loads an attacker-influenced ELF extension on Xtensa with writable storage; llext is documented to accept extensions of untrusted origin. Impact is supervisor-context memory corruption (integrity and availability loss, and a sandbox-boundary escape for user-mode extensions). Exploitation is gated by the Xtensa relocatable PLT path and writable storage, and turning the out-of-range write into a useful primitive is non-trivial.
The fix adds a bound check rejecting any RELA entry whose r_offset >= tgt->sh_size, mirroring the existing validation in the shared branch.
No advisories yet.
Solution
No solution given by the vendor.
Workaround
No workaround given by the vendor.
Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:45:00 +0000
| Type | Values Removed | Values Added |
|---|---|---|
| First Time appeared |
Zephyrproject
Zephyrproject zephyr |
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| Vendors & Products |
Zephyrproject
Zephyrproject zephyr |
Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:30:00 +0000
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| Metrics |
ssvc
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Wed, 12 Aug 2026 05:00:00 +0000
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| Description | The Linkable Loadable Extensions (llext) subsystem mis-handles PLT/RELA relocation entries when linking a relocatable (partially-linked) ELF extension. In llext_link_plt() (subsys/llext/llext_link.c), the relocatable branch (tgt != NULL, the path used for Xtensa relocatable objects) computed the patch address as ext->mem[LLEXT_MEM_TEXT] - text.sh_offset + rela.r_offset + tgt->sh_offset and then performed the relocation write there without validating rela.r_offset. Its sibling shared/dynamic branch already rejected out-of-range offsets via llext_file_offset(). rela.r_offset is read directly from the ELF's RELA table, so a crafted entry with an offset larger than the target section makes the write land arbitrarily far outside the extension's text buffer. The result is an attacker-influenced out-of-bounds write (the location via r_offset, the written value being the resolved symbol address) performed in supervisor context at link time, before any extension code runs. The path is reached from llext_load() whenever an application loads an attacker-influenced ELF extension on Xtensa with writable storage; llext is documented to accept extensions of untrusted origin. Impact is supervisor-context memory corruption (integrity and availability loss, and a sandbox-boundary escape for user-mode extensions). Exploitation is gated by the Xtensa relocatable PLT path and writable storage, and turning the out-of-range write into a useful primitive is non-trivial. The fix adds a bound check rejecting any RELA entry whose r_offset >= tgt->sh_size, mirroring the existing validation in the shared branch. | |
| Title | Out-of-bounds write in Xtensa llext PLT relocation from malformed ELF (CWE-787) | |
| Weaknesses | CWE-787 | |
| References |
| |
| Metrics |
cvssV3_1
|
Projects
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Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: zephyr
Published:
Updated: 2026-08-12T12:34:55.518Z
Reserved: 2026-06-15T01:56:05.689Z
Link: CVE-2026-12235
Updated: 2026-08-12T12:34:50.410Z
Status : Received
Published: 2026-08-12T05:17:42.277
Modified: 2026-08-12T13:17:19.377
Link: CVE-2026-12235
No data.
OpenCVE Enrichment
Updated: 2026-08-12T16:30:05Z