DoS (hard fault) in NXP LPUART driver: unsupported runtime UART config leaves clocks disabled

Summary

The NXP LPUART serial driver (drivers/serial/uart_mcux_lpuart.c), when CONFIG_UART_USE_RUNTIME_CONFIGURE is enabled, called LPUART_Deinit() at the start of mcux_lpuart_configure(), which disables the LPUART peripheral clocks. The requested configuration is validated only afterwards (in mcux_lpuart_configure_basic), and unsupported parity/data-bit/stop-bit/flow-control values return -ENOTSUP before the clock is re-enabled. As a result, a uart_configure() request with an unsupported configuration left the LPUART in a clock-disabled state; any subsequent access to LPUART registers (poll_out/poll_in, interrupt handling, or a later reconfigure) faults on the gated peripheral and escalates to a hard fault, crashing the system. uart_configure() is a Zephyr syscall whose verifier (z_vrfy_uart_configure) only checks that cfg is readable user memory and forwards the caller-supplied configuration unchanged, so an unprivileged userspace thread with access to an LPUART device can deterministically trigger the fault, a persistent system-wide denial of service. Introduced in v2.5.0 and present in all subsequent releases until this fix, which removes the LPUART_Deinit() call and instead only disables the transmitter/receiver, leaving the clock running.

Timeline

1. Jul 21, 2026, 9:30 PM UTCCVE published
2. Jul 22, 2026, 7:32 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial

3. Oct 15, 2026, 10:10 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• zephyr

  From 3.7.0 · fixed in 4.3.1; From 4.4.0 · fixed in 4.4.2

References 2