Executive brief
A vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's Xilinx Axi Ethernet driver, which manages network connectivity for specific hardware. A failure to properly validate data during network packet processing could lead to system crashes or unpredictable behavior. This could result in a denial-of-service, impacting the availability of the affected system.
Technical details
A vulnerability exists in the axienet_dma_rx_cb function within drivers/net/ethernet/xilinx/xilinx_axienet_main.c. The driver fails to check the return value of dmaengine_desc_get_metadata_ptr(), which can return an error pointer. If the pointer retrieval fails, the driver continues processing with invalid data, leading to a potential NULL pointer dereference (CWE-476) or undefined behavior. An attacker could potentially trigger this condition via network traffic that causes DMA metadata retrieval failures, resulting in a kernel panic. Patches have been released for stable kernel branches including 6.12.46, 6.16.6, and 6.17.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 6.8 to 6.12.45, 6.13 to 6.16.5
Timeline
- 2025-09-04: patched: Initial fix committed to mainline kernel
- 2025-10-01: disclosed: CVE-2025-39897 assigned and published