Public mode

No access to your tenant or devices. Every item links to its source. What this means

Sources need attention Customize Public modeDiscuss ChangeIntel on Discord

Type confusion in Zephyr HL78xx GNSS NMEA driver causes wild-pointer write from GNSS input

CVSS 3.1 5.3 MEDIUMCheck source for fixed versionsKEV status unknown

cve-program · CVE-2026-15461

Published

The Sierra Wireless HL78xx modem GNSS driver (drivers/modem/hl78xx/, later drivers/modem/vendor_standalone/hl78xx/) embeds a generic struct gnss_nmea0183_match_data match_data inside struct hl78xx_gnss_data. The generic NMEA0183 match helper (drivers/gnss/gnss_nmea0183_match.c) requires that context to be the first member because its callbacks cast user_data directly to struct gnss_nmea0183_match_data . In the affected releases match_data was the second member (after const struct device dev), so it sat at a non-zero offset while gnss_nmea0183_match_init() initialized it at the correct address. The registered NMEA handlers instead pass the whole device data object (data->devices.gnss->data, offset 0), producing an offset-shifted type confusion between where state is initialized and where the parse callbacks read and write it. When NMEA sentences from the GNSS receiver are parsed, the GGA/RMC callbacks write parsed fix data into the wrong location within the struct, and the GSV callback (gnss_nmea0183_match_gsv_callback, active under CONFIG_GNSS_SATELLITES) reads its satellites pointer and bound from the wrong offsets — non-pointer bytes of struct hl78xx_gnss_data — and then writes parsed struct gnss_satellite entries through that bogus pointer. This is a write through an uninitialized/wild pointer with a garbage bound. The NMEA handlers are registered by default (CONFIG_HL78XX_GNSS_SOURCE_NMEA is the default GNSS source) on devices using the HL78xx GNSS. The driver runs in kernel context and the NMEA data originates from the GNSS radio front-end, so a party able to influence the GNSS signal (for example GNSS/GPS spoofing at radio proximity) can drive the kernel-side parser into the faulty write. The most likely impact is a crash (denial of service) because the bogus pointer resolves to a fixed near-NULL value, with adjacent-memory corruption possible on MMU-less targets. Confidentiality is not affected. Exploitation requires the satellites feature to be enabled and active, so attack complexity is high.

Read the publisher's advisory

Affected versions, risk and source history

Related advisories and sources

Publishers link these advisories through the identifiers shown below. A shared identifier or date alone does not tell you whether your software is affected or whether the advisories describe the same cause.

CVE-2026-15461 · CVE overview and exploitation status

cve-program · CVE-2026-15461

Related changes

Linked by CVE identifier

No related changes are available here.

ChangeIntel

An IT change radar: releases, security, known issues, retirements, documentation changes, and service status from public sources. Every item links to supporting evidence; dates and statuses can change after they are read.

Sources read 15 Nov 02:45 UTC · 256 of 275 readable · 254 fully read · documentation 439/469 current