Executive brief
A vulnerability in the Linux kernel's EIP93 crypto driver can cause a system crash (kernel panic). The EIP93 component is a hardware accelerator used for encryption and hashing tasks. If an application attempts to use certain cryptographic functions, the driver may fail to initialize correctly and subsequently crash the entire operating system, leading to a denial of service.
Technical details
A vulnerability exists in the eip93_hmac_setkey() function within the Linux kernel's Inside Secure SafeXcel EIP-93 crypto driver. The function incorrectly uses the CRYPTO_ALG_ASYNC mask when allocating a temporary ahash transform, which conflicts with the inherently asynchronous nature of the EIP93 hardware algorithms. This causes the allocation to fail with -ENOENT, leaving the Security Association (SA) record partially initialized. Subsequent cryptographic operations then trigger a NULL pointer dereference when accessing the request context, resulting in a kernel panic. The issue is resolved by removing the restrictive CRYPTO_ALG_ASYNC mask from the crypto_alloc_ahash() call.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel drivers/crypto/inside-secure/eip93/eip93-common.c
Timeline
- 2026-04-11: other: Patch authored
- 2026-06-26: advisory: NVD publication date