Executive brief
A technical issue was identified in the Linux kernel's Airoha Ethernet driver that could cause networking performance problems or system instability. The problem involves how the system tracks data packets being sent over the network, potentially leading to incorrect internal accounting. This could result in degraded network throughput or unexpected behavior during high-traffic periods.
Technical details
A vulnerability in the Linux kernel's Airoha Ethernet driver (airoha_eth.c) stems from a Byte Queue Limits (BQL) imbalance in the transmit (TX) path. In airoha_dev_xmit(), inflight packets were accounted for using a specific subset of TX rings, while airoha_qdma_tx_napi_poll() accounted for completions across all available netdev TX queues. This mismatch in queue indexing leads to inconsistent BQL accounting. An attacker could potentially exploit this to cause resource exhaustion or network performance degradation. The fix synchronizes the queue accounting by using skb_get_tx_queue() and ensures all queues are reset during the ndo_stop callback. Patches have been released for various stable kernel branches including 6.12.y, 6.18.y, and 7.0.y.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 6.12.91, 6.13, 6.18.33, 7.0.10
Timeline
- 2026-04-21: other: Patch authored by Lorenzo Bianconi
- 2026-06-24: advisory: CVE-2026-52983 published by NVD