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.
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.
Default status is the baseline for the product, each version can override it (e.g. patched versions marked unaffected).
| Vendor | Product | Default status | Versions | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| zephyrproject | zephyr | unaffected |
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Sun, 02 Aug 2026 14:45:00 +0000
| Type | Values Removed | Values 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. | |
| Title | PSA key-slot leak in Bluetooth Mesh subnet deletion leading to resource-exhaustion DoS | |
| Weaknesses | CWE-401 | |
| References |
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| Metrics |
cvssV3_1
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MITRE
Status: PUBLISHED
Assigner: zephyr
Published:
Updated: 2026-08-02T14:20:03.175Z
Reserved: 2026-06-03T15:44:07.840Z
Link: CVE-2026-10774
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