Executive brief
A vulnerability in the Linux kernel's Marvell Prestera network driver could allow a local user to crash the system. The issue occurs when the system fails to allocate memory for network device management, leading to a kernel crash rather than a graceful error. This impacts system availability and could be used to cause a denial-of-service on affected hardware, including certain industrial Siemens controllers.
Technical details
A NULL pointer dereference exists in the Marvell Prestera Ethernet driver (prestera_devlink.c) within the Linux kernel. The function prestera_devlink_alloc() fails to validate the return value of devlink_alloc() before passing it to devlink_priv(). If devlink_alloc() returns NULL due to memory allocation failure, the subsequent unconditional call results in a kernel panic. This is a local vulnerability requiring low privileges to trigger via actions that initiate driver allocation. Patches have been released across multiple stable kernel branches (5.10.y, 5.15.y, 6.1.y, 6.6.y, 6.12.y, and mainline).
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 5.10 to 6.13
- Siemens SIMATIC S7-1500 CPU 1518-4 PN/DP MFP V3.1.6
Timeline
- 2025-12-29: other: Patch authored
- 2026-01-17: patched: Patch committed to stable trees
- 2026-01-31: disclosed: CVE published
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/325aea74be7e192b5c947c782da23b0d19a5fda2
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/326a4b7e61d01db3507f71c8bb5e85362f607064
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3950054c9512add0cc79ab7e72b6d2f9f675e25b
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8a4333b2818f0d853b43e139936c20659366e4a0
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/94e070cd50790317fba7787ae6006934b7edcb6f
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a428e0da1248c353557970848994f35fd3f005e2
- https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-019113.html