nRF54H20: MCUBoot can be tricked to executing unauthenticated code
21Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackcvss 7.5epss 0.1%
exploitation probability
0.1%top 99% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
When using the Direct XIP
update strategy, the main application image starts other cores (i.e. radio
core), based on the currently active slot without additional verification. The
MCUboot in the bare (upstream) configuration assumes that if there is at least
a single slot for each image available, the system is bootable and continues
the boot process. This may lead to a situation when MCUboot picks different
slot for different images (i.e. (a) for the main application and (b) for the
radio image), boots the main application (from slot (a)) that afterwards starts
the radio image by providing an address of the unauthenticated slot ((a)
instead of (b)).
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Affected products
Nordic Semiconductor ASA · nRF54H20