Executive brief
RIOT OS is an open-source operating system designed for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. A security vulnerability exists in its tapslip6 utility, which is used to bridge network traffic between a computer and an IoT device. An attacker could exploit this flaw to crash the utility or potentially execute unauthorized code, which could disrupt development environments or compromise systems where the tool is run with elevated privileges.
Technical details
A stack-based buffer overflow (CWE-121) exists in the tapslip6 utility of RIOT OS. The vulnerability is located in the devopen() function, which uses strcpy() and strcat() to construct a device path by concatenating the '/dev/' prefix with a user-supplied string from the -s command-line argument. Because the utility does not perform bounds checking on this input before copying it into a fixed-size 1024-byte stack buffer, a local attacker can provide an excessively long string to trigger the overflow. This can result in memory corruption, process crashes, or potential arbitrary code execution. While the attack requires local access to execute the utility, the tool is frequently run with root/administrative privileges during IoT development and testing.
Affected products
- RIOT-OS RIOT OS up to and including 2026.01-devel-317
Timeline
- 2026-01-08: disclosed: Initial disclosure on Full Disclosure mailing list by Ron Edgerson
- 2026-01-12: advisory: NVD and VulnCheck published advisory details