CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2019-17212 — Buffer overflows were discovered in the CoAP library in Arm Mbed OS 5.14.0
Buffer overflows were discovered in the CoAP library in Arm Mbed OS 5.14.0. The CoAP parser is responsible for parsing received CoAP packets. The function sn_coap_parser_options_parse() parses CoAP input linearly using a while loop. Once an option is parsed in a loop, the current point (*packet_data_pptr) is increased correspondingly. The pointer is restricted by the size of the received buffer, as well as by the 0xFF delimiter byte. Inside each while loop, the check of the value of *packet_data_pptr is not strictly enforced. More specifically, inside a loop, *packet_data_pptr could be increased and then dereferenced without checking. Moreover, there are many other functions in the format of sn_coap_parser_****() that do not check whether the pointer is within the bounds of the allocated buffer. All of these lead to heap-based or stack-based buffer overflows, depending on how the CoAP packet buffer is allocated.
- Severity
- Critical
- CVSS
- 9.8 (3.1)
- Published
- 2019-11-05
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- operating-system
- Weaknesses
- CWE-129, CWE-787
Affected products
- mbed / mbed / 5.13.2
- mbed / mbed / 5.14.0
Matched remediation archetype
Buffer bounds, memory safety, and memory corruption
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Identify affected native-code versions, build flags, architectures, parsers, codecs, drivers, and input paths in all shipped artifacts.
- Determine whether untrusted data reaches the affected routine and the process privilege, sandbox, and network exposure.
- Confirm statically linked, vendored, firmware, and platform-provided copies, not only package-manager records.
Remediate safely
- Apply the maintained upstream correction or replace the affected component, then rebuild every dependent artifact from clean inputs.
- Adopt bounds-checked interfaces, validated sizes and integer conversions, clear ownership, and memory-safe components where practical.
- Enable supported compiler and runtime hardening and add sanitized tests and fuzz regression seeds derived from non-weaponized fixtures.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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