CVE-2026-5857 HIGH

CVE-2026-5857: Contiki-NG MQTT Client Out-of-Bounds Write in PUBLISH Topic Parser via Persistent State Between TCP Segments

Vendor Contiki-Ng
Product Contiki-NG
Weakness CWE-787
Published August 6, 2026
Last update August 6, 2026

CVSS base score

8.1/10
Attack vector Network
Attack complexity High
Privileges required None
User interaction None
Confidentiality High
Integrity High

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

What the vulnerability does

01Description

Contiki-NG's MQTT client parse_publish_vhdr() in os/net/app-layer/mqtt/mqtt.c sets topic_len_received=1 before checking topic_len against the 64-byte limit, so an over-length topic returns early but leaves the flag set. On the next TCP segment, tcp_input() re-invokes the parser with topic_received==0, and the persisted topic_len_received==1 skips the length-reading block containing the guard, falling through directly to a memcpy() that uses the unvalidated 16-bit topic_len as the copy length. The 65-byte topic[] destination overruns into adjacent struct fields including the payload_chunk pointer, which subsequent MQTT code dereferences, giving a compromised or attacker-controlled broker an arbitrary-pointer-write primitive. Contiki-NG's MQTT implementation has no TLS support so the connection is plaintext. Impact ranges from information disclosure and denial of service to remote code execution on embedded targets without memory protection.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

August 6, 2026 CVE published