Out-of-bounds read in Zephyr OCPP 1.6 RPC message parser (parse_rpc_msg)

Summary

The OCPP 1.6 client in subsys/net/lib/ocpp parsed inbound WAMP RPC frames in parse_rpc_msg() (subsys/net/lib/ocpp/ocpp_j.c) using a hand-rolled helper, extract_string_field(), that copied the message's uid and action fields with strncpy(out_buf, token + 1, outlen - 1) and then scanned the result with strchr(out_buf, '"'). Because strncpy does not NUL-terminate the destination when the source is at least outlen - 1 (127) bytes long, the subsequent strchr reads past the 128-byte destination buffer into adjacent stack memory; if a " byte is found beyond the buffer, a one-byte out-of-bounds NUL write also occurs. A related defect in extract_payload() runs strchr/strrchr over the receive buffer, which may not be NUL-terminated when a maximal-length frame fills it. The parsed bytes come directly from the OCPP central-system server over a websocket: the reader thread fills recv_buf via websocket_recv_msg() and calls parse_rpc_msg() on each inbound DATA frame (subsys/net/lib/ocpp/ocpp.c). A malicious or compromised central server, or an on-path attacker (OCPP is commonly deployed over plain ws://), can send an RPC frame whose uid or action field is 127+ bytes with no closing quote, triggering the out-of-bounds access. The primary impact is a remotely triggerable denial of service: the unbounded scan can fault on an unmapped page, and the stray NUL write can corrupt adjacent stack state. The over-read data is not reflected to the peer, so disclosure is limited. The feature is EXPERIMENTAL and must be explicitly enabled (CONFIG_OCPP). The fix replaces the manual parser with the bounds-respecting json_mixed_arr_parse() and copies the extracted uid with an explicitly NUL-terminated buffer, eliminating both over-reads.

Timeline

1. Aug 2, 2026, 4:12 PM UTCCVE published
2. Aug 3, 2026, 2:55 PM UTCCISA SSVC assessment

   Exploitation: poc · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial

3. Aug 31, 2026, 11:13 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• zephyr

  From 4.3.0 · fixed in 4.4.2

References 2