# CVE-2026-12999: Infineon Airoc Wi-Fi driver leaks TX buffers on send failure, leading to permanent pool exhaustion

Status: published. Published: 2026-08-22. Updated: 2026-11-04.

The Infineon Airoc Wi-Fi driver's transmit callback airoc_mgmt_send() in drivers/wifi/infineon/airoc_wifi.c allocates a net_buf from the fixed airoc_pool for every outbound packet. When whd_network_send_ethernet_data() returns a synchronous failure, the underlying WHD library does not take ownership of the buffer, but the pre-fix driver returned -EIO without releasing it. Each failed transmit therefore permanently leaks one buffer from the pool.

airoc_pool is small and fixed (AIROC_WIFI_TX_PACKET_POOL_COUNT + AIROC_WIFI_RX_PACKET_POOL_COUNT, default 20 buffers) and is shared by WHD's whd_host_buffer_get callback for both transmit and receive. Once enough send failures have leaked the pool dry, airoc_wifi_host_buffer_get() returns WHD_BUFFER_ALLOC_FAIL for all subsequent allocations, so both transmit and the WHD-driven receive path fail and Wi-Fi connectivity is lost until the device is rebooted.

The leak occurs only on the transmit error path. A Wi-Fi-adjacent attacker can influence the conditions that cause synchronous send failures (for example by deauthenticating/disassociating the station while the local stack continues to attempt transmits), and ordinary transient failures over the device's lifetime accumulate toward the same state. Reliable on-demand triggering is of high complexity and the impact is availability-only, but the resulting denial of service is permanent and non-recoverable without a reboot.

The fix releases the buffer with airoc_wifi_buffer_release() on the failure branch, returning it to the pool. The commit also removes a redundant k_sem_give() in airoc_mgmt_disconnect(); because data->sema_common is a binary semaphore (limit 1) the duplicate give merely saturated at 1 and had no security impact.

## Remediation

- fix: The reporting source identifies this reference as a patch. Check the advisory for affected versions and supported release branches. (source: CNA: zephyr) — https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/commit/4e6f624292ed153a762e98c7a297998c8d0b52c4

## Affected products and versions

- zephyrproject / zephyr (zephyr): ≥ 3.6.0; < 4.3.2 (affected, semver); ≥ 4.4.0; < 4.4.2 (affected, semver). Source: CNA: zephyr

## Severity and prioritization

- CVSS 3.1: 5.3 (medium); CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H; source: CNA: zephyr

- CVSS 3.1: 5.3 (medium); CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H; source: NVD: vulnerabilities@zephyrproject.org

- CISA KEV: No listing in collected sources

- EPSS: 0.25% as of 2026-11-03; percentile 15.99%

- SSVC: exploitation none; automatable no; technical impact partial; source ADP: CISA-ADP

- Weaknesses: CWE-401

## Exploit evidence

No exploit evidence in collected sources. This is not proof of no exploitation.

## References

- https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/commit/4e6f624292ed153a762e98c7a297998c8d0b52c4 (CNA: zephyr; patch)

- https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/security/advisories/GHSA-8w97-ghfm-5wjp (CNA: zephyr)

- https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/commit/4e6f624292ed153a762e98c7a297998c8d0b52c4 (vulnerabilities@zephyrproject.org)

- https://github.com/zephyrproject-rtos/zephyr/security/advisories/GHSA-8w97-ghfm-5wjp (vulnerabilities@zephyrproject.org)

## Provenance

- CNA: zephyr: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-12999; retrieved 2026-11-04; source updated 2026-11-04

- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-12999; retrieved 2026-11-04; source updated 2026-11-04

- FIRST EPSS: https://api.first.org/data/v1/epss?cve=CVE-2026-12999; retrieved 2026-11-04; source updated Not reported

Revision: c3d7b75f67a78b943c58e0fb1a4394488eff5eda090fec498492367696ebbd18

Canonical: https://y2.dev/cve/CVE-2026-12999

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