Reference page — cumulative record through Wednesday, August 19, 2026 UTC. Reference pages update as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record.
zephyrproject zephyr — PSA key-slot leak in Bluetooth Mesh subnet deletion leading to resource-exhaustion DoS
AV AC PR UI S C I A CVSS EPSS %ile KEV
A L N N U N N H 6.5 .0018 7.7 —
AFFECTED
Product Versions Fixed
zephyr 3.6.0 – —
TIMELINE
Jun 3 Reserved by zephyr
Aug 2 EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2026-10774 (zephyrproject zephyr). Public exploit reference added.
Aug 2 Published (CNA: zephyr)
Aug 10 EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2026-10774 (zephyrproject zephyr). Public exploit reference added.
Description
Zephyr's Bluetooth Mesh subnet key management leaks one PSA Crypto key slot on every subnet-key teardown. In subsys/bluetooth/mesh/subnet.c, net_keys_create() imports the Private Beacon Key into a PSA key slot under CONFIG_BT_MESH_PRIV_BEACONS (enabled by default), but subnet_keys_destroy() guarded the matching psa_destroy_key() with CONFIG_BT_MESH_V1d1. That Kconfig symbol was removed when explicit Mesh 1.0.1 support was dropped, so the destroy branch became permanently dead code and the import is never balanced by a destroy.
The imbalanced teardown is reached every time subnet keys are destroyed: deleting a subnet (Config Server NetKey Delete), completing a Key Refresh Procedure (which retires the old key set), and resetting/re-provisioning the node. The over-the-air triggers are processed only under the node's device key, so they are exercisable by the provisioner or network administrator that owns the node, reachable over the Bluetooth Mesh network.
With the default CONFIG_MBEDTLS_PSA_KEY_SLOT_COUNT of 16, repeated add/delete or key-refresh cycles exhaust the shared PSA key-slot pool after roughly a dozen rounds. Once exhausted, bt_mesh_private_beacon_key() and thus subnet creation fail: the node can no longer add subnets or complete key refresh, and other PSA crypto consumers on the device may be starved, until the device is rebooted. The fix aligns the destroy guard with the import guard (CONFIG_BT_MESH_PRIV_BEACONS) so each slot is freed.
Lifecycle
Complete event history — 4 events, chronological
| Date | Event | Detail |
|---|
| June 3, 2026 | Reserved | Reserved by zephyr |
| August 2, 2026 | EXPLOIT PUBLISHED | EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2026-10774 (zephyrproject zephyr). Public exploit reference added. |
| August 2, 2026 | Published | Published (CNA: zephyr) |
| August 10, 2026 | EXPLOIT PUBLISHED | EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2026-10774 (zephyrproject zephyr). Public exploit reference added. |
Affected
Affected products and packages — 1 row
| Vendor | Product / Package | Ecosystem | Version introduced | Fixed |
|---|
| zephyrproject | zephyr | — | 3.6.0 | — |
About this page
This is a reference page, not a dated page of record. It assembles the complete lifecycle of CVE-2026-10774 from the CVE Program record, NVD enrichment, the CISA KEV catalog, EPSS, and OSV advisories. The box score's numbers (CVSS, EPSS, KEV status) are current as of Wednesday, August 19, 2026 UTC and are re-derived as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record. The authoritative source for this identifier is cve.org.