CVE.org (no NVD analysis yet)· CNA zephyr

CVE-2026-81039: Bluetooth Host connection reservation leak when multiple connectable advertising sets share an identity

Noroxi assessment

Priority: Monitor (action score 17/100)

The sources we track (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei, GitHub) show no public exploit code or exploitation in the wild.
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days: 0.20% (FIRST EPSS).
Someone on the same network segment can trigger it. No account or password is required. No user action is required. No special conditions are required; it is repeatable.
Fixed version: zephyrproject zephyr 4.5.0.

Low priority for now. Upgrade to zephyrproject zephyr 4.5.0 or later.

Generated automatically from the record's data: CVSS (NVD and CNA), CISA KEV and SSVC, FIRST EPSS, exploit sources, fixed versions. How we calculate it

Primary sources: NVD · CVE.org · FIRST EPSS

The Bluetooth host pre-allocates a bt_conn object (a "reservation") from the fixed acl_conns[] pool for every connectable advertising set it starts, in le_adv_start_add_conn() in subsys/bluetooth/host/adv.c. When an incoming peripheral connection completes, find_pending_connect() in subsys/bluetooth/host/hci_core.c looked that reservation up using only the identity and the peer address, with a directed-then-undirected fallback, and had no knowledge of which advertising set actually terminated. With CONFIG_BT_EXT_ADV_MAX_ADV_SET > 1, where the LE Enhanced Connection Complete event is cached until the LE Advertising Set Terminated event identifies the set, this lookup can return the reservation belonging to a different, still-running advertising set. The defect is reachable over the air by any adjacent device. If an application runs two connectable extended advertising sets on the same identity — one undirected and one directed at a peer P (the common "directed reconnect to a bonded central while still accepting new centrals" pattern) — a remote initiator whose address maps to P connecting on the undirected set causes the directed set's reservation to be consumed instead. The initiator address is chosen freely by the remote device and is not authenticated at link establishment, so no bonding, pairing or prior relationship is required to trigger the mis-attribution. The undirected set's own reservation is then stranded: its BT_ADV_ENABLED flag has already been cleared, and le_adv_stop_free_conn() — the only path that returns a reservation to the pool — is reached only for sets that are still enabled, so bt_le_ext_adv_stop() returns early and the object is never released. Each occurrence permanently consumes one CONFIG_BT_MAX_CONN slot until bt_disable() or reboot. In application patterns that restart the directed advertising set after each disconnect, an attacker can repeat the sequence until the pool is exhausted, after which connectable advertising fails with -ENOMEM and the device can no longer accept connections. As a side effect the directed set keeps advertising without a reservation, so a genuine connection on it is dropped by bt_hci_disconnect(). The impact is availability only; no memory corruption or information disclosure results, and configurations with a single advertising set are unaffected.

MediumCVSS 4.3 · v3.1—No exploit Fix available

EUVD-2026-109971

Published: Oct 26, 2026
Updated: Oct 26, 2026
EPSS: 0.2% · 10th percentile
CWE: CWE-772

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Action score

Monitor

Low priority for now.

CVSS: 17 / 40 · 4.3 / 10
CISA KEV: 0 / 30 · Not listed
EPSS: 0 / 30 · 0.2%

CISA SSVC decision

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: partial

Vulnrichment: CISA's decision-tree inputs.

CNA vs NVD score

NVD: —
CNA · zephyr: 4.3; NVD has not scored this yet; the score shown is the CNA’s.

The score given by the assigning authority versus NVD’s independent score. A gap means the severity is contested.

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Noroxi analysis

What does it mean in your environment?

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Affected systems

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Versions reported by the vendor

Affected version ranges reported by the assigning authority (zephyr). Independent of NVD's CPE analysis and usually ahead of it.

zephyrproject zephyr
- 2.3.0 and later · before 4.5.0affected · semver

Same product

zephyrproject: all records

Other highest-scoring records for the same primary product.

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Published before and after this one in the same product

← EarlierCVE-2026-19742Oct 26, 2026 · IPv6 stable and temporary interface identifiers derived from a non-cryptographic PRNG secret key
14Monitor
← EarlierCVE-2026-81038Oct 26, 2026 · Bluetooth OTS server discloses uninitialized stack memory in failed Calculate Checksum responses
28Monitor
Later →CVE-2026-82388Oct 26, 2026 · Use of a released HFP HF object after a failed RFCOMM connect in the Bluetooth Classic host
21Monitor

Remediation

Which version to upgrade to

Fix versions compiled from the vendor, package registries and Microsoft. Verify the vendor's note before upgrading.

Product / package	Fixed version	Source
zephyrproject zephyr	4.5.0	Vendor (CNA)

Exploit status

No known public exploit

No public exploit has been observed yet. That doesn't mean you're safe, only that the bar is a little higher.

Research context

For pentesters and researchers: attack profile, score disagreement, timeline, patch commits, credits, variant and chain candidates, bug bounty scope. All derived from existing data; no exploit code.

Timeline

From publication to today: proof of concept, Metasploit module, CISA KEV and fix record. Dates are as reported by the sources.

PublishedOct 26, 2026
Fix recordedOct 26, 2026same day
TodayOct 29, 2026+3 d

EPSS, last 120 days

FIRST EPSS daily score; only changes of 0.01 or more are recorded (step chart).

Patch and commit links

Commit, PR and diff links among the references. A starting point for patch-diffing and variant hunting; fixes, not exploits.

zephyrproject-rtos/zephyrcommit b6a5e6e

Credits

All researchers

Finders, reporters and analysts named in the CNA record. Click a name for that researcher’s other records.

No credits in the CNA record.

Variant candidates

Same product, same weakness class, within 18 months. If the patch missed the root cause, the sibling bug is here.

CVE-2026-13351123 days apartnet: Maliciously fragmented IPv6 packets can prevent receiving/processing future incoming packets
30Monitor
CVE-2026-1993713 days apartBluetooth Mesh Access layer permanently leaks delayable-message contexts, disabling all model responses
22Monitor
CVE-2026-1181177 days apartSocket file-descriptor leak in UpdateHub OTA client start_coap_client() leading to resource-exhaustion DoS
14Monitor

Chain candidates

An authentication bypass and a privilege-requiring bug in the same product, published close together: combined they may become an unauthenticated path.

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Bug bounty scope

No known public program.

Source: bounty-targets-data (public HackerOne, Bugcrowd, Intigriti, YesWeHack listings).