The MCTP-over-I2C+GPIO target binding in subsys/pmci/mctp/mctp_i2c_gpio_target.c emulates a small pseudo-register file, where the bus controller first writes a register number and then writes or reads payload bytes. The selected register (b->reg_addr) and the data-phase flag (b->rxtx) were never cleared when the controller issued an I2C STOP, so after a completed transfer the target still had a data register selected while the packet buffer that register refers to had already been consumed and set to NULL by mctp_i2c_gpio_target_stop().

A controller on the bus can re-enter the same branch of mctp_i2c_gpio_target_stop() with a NULL buffer using two ordinary transactions and no authentication: first a normal packet write to MCTP_I2C_GPIO_RX_MSG_ADDR followed by STOP (which delivers and frees b->rx_pkt), then a bare read transaction followed by STOP. The failing read_requested() call leaves the stale state untouched and the I2C driver still delivers the STOP callback, which then calls mctp_bus_rx() with a NULL packet. The symmetric case exists on the transmit side, where the stale MCTP_I2C_GPIO_TX_MSG_ADDR selection dereferences b->tx_pkt->end after b->tx_pkt has been cleared and additionally signals b->tx_complete a second time, causing the next outbound packet to be dropped.

The dereference happens in the I2C target interrupt handler, so on any target that traps accesses to address 0 the result is a fatal exception and a device reset or halt — a denial of service inflicted…