CVE-2026-11985 json
Cross-thread FPU register leak on ARM when FPU enabled without register sharing
published 2026-08-11 2 mo ago modified 2026-10-23 16 d ago also EUVD-2026-55936
- cvss
- 3.6
- version 3.1, CNA
- cisa kev
- Not listed
- not in CISA's catalog
- epss
- 0.1%
- EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 2%
- public exploits
- 0
- none known
Summary
On the Zephyr ARM port, enabling the hardware FPU (CONFIG_FPU) forces the "Floating point ABI" choice, which defaults to CONFIG_FP_HARDABI. Both FP_HARDABI and FP_SOFTABI permit the compiler to emit hardware FP instructions in any function, even code that never uses floating-point types. However, the callee-saved FP registers (s16-s31 / d8-d15) are only saved and restored across a context switch when CONFIG_FPU_SHARING is enabled (arch/arm/core/cortex_m/swap_helper.S and arch/arm/core/cortex_a_r/swap_helper.S), and prior to this fix selecting an ABI did not enable FPU register sharing, which defaults off.
In a build that enables the FPU with the default ABI but leaves CONFIG_FPU_SHARING disabled, the kernel preserves no callee-saved FP register state across thread switches. The documented precondition for this "unshared" mode — that only a single thread ever executes FP instructions — is silently violated because the compiler may generate FP instructions in every thread.
Under CONFIG_USERSPACE, where threads are mutually isolated, this becomes an information-disclosure boundary crossing: a victim thread can leave secret-derived values in s16-s31, and a co-resident unprivileged thread can read those registers directly (FP register access is not privilege-gated), recovering data left behind by another thread. Without userspace the same defect causes cross-thread FP state corruption (a correctness fault). The leak is bounded to the 16 callee-saved single-precision registers and is opportunistic, so impact is low.
The fix makes FP_HARDABI and FP_SOFTABI select CONFIG_FPU_SHARING and tags every thread with K_FP_REGS at creation, so callee-saved FP state is always preserved across context switches whenever the compiler may emit FP instructions.
Patch / fix
CISA SSVC
- Exploitation
- none
- Automatable
- no
- Technical impact
- partial
- Assessed
- 2 mo ago
Exploit prediction
0.13% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 2% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).
CVSS scores
| assigned by | version | score | vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| CNA | 3.1 | 3.6 | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N |
Affected products
- zephyrproject zephyr
Classification
- Weakness
-
- CWE-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor
References
Sources
- CVE List CVE-2026-11985
- NVD CVE-2026-11985
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