CVE-2026-15461Type confusion in Zephyr HL78xx GNSS NMEA driver causes wild-pointer write from GNSS input

The Sierra Wireless HL78xx modem GNSS driver (drivers/modem/hl78xx/, later drivers/modem/vendor_standalone/hl78xx/) embeds a generic struct gnss_nmea0183_match_data match_data inside struct hl78xx_gnss_data. The generic NMEA0183 match helper (drivers/gnss/gnss_nmea0183_match.c) requires that context to be the first member because its callbacks cast user_data directly to struct gnss_nmea0183_match_data . In the affected releases match_data was the second member (after const struct device dev), so it sat at a non-zero offset while gnss_nmea0183_match_init() initialized it at the correct address. The registered NMEA handlers instead pass the whole device data object (data->devices.gnss->data, offset 0), producing an offset-shifted type confusion between where state is initialized and where the parse callbacks read and write it. When NMEA sentences from the GNSS receiver are parsed, the GGA/RMC callbacks write parsed fix data into the wrong location within the struct, and the GSV callback (gnss_nmea0183_match_gsv_callback, active under CONFIG_GNSS_SATELLITES) reads its satellites pointer and bound from the wrong offsets — non-pointer bytes of struct hl78xx_gnss_data — and then writes parsed struct gnss_satellite entries through that bogus pointer. This is a write through an uninitialized/wild pointer with a garbage bound. The NMEA handlers are registered by default (CONFIG_HL78XX_GNSS_SOURCE_NMEA is the default GNSS source) on devices using the HL78xx GNSS. The driver runs in kernel context and the NMEA data originates from the GNSS radio front-end, so a party able to influence the GNSS signal (for example GNSS/GPS spoofing at radio proximity) can drive the kernel-side parser into the faulty write. The most likely impact is a crash (denial of service) because the bogus pointer resolves to a fixed near-NULL value, with adjacent-memory corruption possible on MMU-less targets. Confidentiality is not affected. Exploitation requires the satellites feature to be enabled and active, so attack complexity is high.

CVSS

5.3 MEDIUM (v3.1, CNA)CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Weakness (CWE)

CWE-843

Known exploited

Not in CISA's KEV catalog

EPSS (exploitation in the next 30 days)

Not loaded for this CVE

Assigned by

zephyr

NVD analysis

Awaiting Analysis

Record last updated

Sep 10, 2026

First seen by InfoSec Signals

Oct 9, 2026

The CVE record on cve.org · NVD's entry

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