Out-of-bounds read in Universal Boot Loader (U-Boot) - CVE-2024-42040

Vulnerability identifier: #VU123165

CSH Severity: Medium

CVSS v4: 7.1 [CVSS:4.0/AV:A/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N]

CVE-ID: CVE-2024-42040

CWE-ID: CWE-125

Exploitation vector: Adjecent network

Exploit availability: No public exploit available

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to gain access to potentially sensitive information.

The vulnerability exists due to a boundary condition within the bootp_handler() function in net/bootp.c when handling DHCP packets. A remote attacker on the local network can send specially crafted DHCP packets to the affected system to trigger an out-of-bounds read error and read contents of memory on the system by analyzing DHCP responses.

Universal Boot Loader (U-Boot)
openEuler
Ubuntu
uboot-tools
uboot-images-elf
uboot-tools-debuginfo
uboot-tools-debugsource
uboot-images-armv8
uboot-tools-help
u-boot (Ubuntu package)

Install updates from vendor's website.

Universal Boot Loader (U-Boot) - update to 2026.01 rc1
uboot-tools - update to 2021.10-12
uboot-images-elf - update to 2021.10-12
uboot-tools-debuginfo - update to 2021.10-12
uboot-tools-debugsource - update to 2021.10-12
uboot-images-armv8 - update to 2021.10-12
uboot-tools-help - update to 2021.10-12
u-boot (Ubuntu package) - addressed in versions 2022.01+dfsg-2ubuntu2.7, 2025.10-0ubuntu0.24.04.2

• https://www.schutzwerk.com/advisories/SCHUTZWERK-SA-2024-004.txt
• https://github.com/u-boot/u-boot/commit/81e5708cc2c865df606e49aed5415adb2a662171
• https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-xh96-vq46-m9ww

• Information disclosure in U-Boot
• Ubuntu update for u-boot
• openEuler update for uboot-tools