Missing kernel object permission check in devmux syscalls allows unprivileged user threads to retarget a device multiplexer

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The device multiplexer pseudo-driver in drivers/misc/devmux/devmux.c exposes two system calls, devmux_select_get() and devmux_select_set(). When CONFIG_USERSPACE is enabled, their user-mode verifiers z_vrfy_devmux_select_get() and z_vrfy_devmux_select_set() forwarded directly to the kernel implementations without performing any kernel-object validation — no k_object_access_check() and no driver object check. Compounding this, DEVICE_DT_INST_DEFINE() registered devmux instances with a NULL driver API pointer, which causes scripts/build/gen_kobject_list.py to skip them entirely, so a devmux device had no struct k_object and no permission on it could be granted or withheld in the first place. Any thread running in user mode can reach the defect: device pointers such as DEVICE_DT_GET(DT_NODELABEL(devmux0)) are compile-time constants available to application code, and the syscall accepted them from a thread that had never been granted access to the device. The kernel implementations do validate the pointer against the static devmux instance table and bounds-check the selection index, so this is not a memory-safety issue; the failure is purely one of authorization. Exposure requires CONFIG_USERSPACE=y together with the experimental CONFIG_DEVMUX=y (which depends on CONFIG_DEVICE_MUTABLE) and a zephyr,devmux devicetree node. An unprivileged user-mode thread can read and change which downstream device a multiplexer forwards to, bypassing the userspace object-permission model. Because a devmux forwards the data, configuration and API of the selected device — its documented use being zephyr,console and zephyr,shell-uart switching — an attacker can suppress console, log and shell output, redirect that output to a downstream device it is able to observe, or flip the selection underneath another thread that is legitimately using the multiplexer. The impact is bounded to the devicetree-fixed set of downstream devices; no out-of-bounds access or arbitrary pointer dereference is reachable. The fix declares __subsystem struct devmux_driver_api and attaches a DEVICE_API(devmux, devmux_api) instance to each devmux device so that it becomes a tracked K_OBJ_DRIVER_DEVMUX kernel object, and adds K_OOPS(devmux_inst_get(dev) == SIZE_MAX) plus K_OOPS(k_object_access_check(dev) != 0) to both verifiers.

Source published

21 Oct 2026 18:19:35 UTC

Source modified

23 Oct 2026 21:23:27 UTC

Observed here

23 Oct 2026 22:48:20 UTC

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CVSS 3.1 · 5.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L