Executive brief
A vulnerability was identified in the Linux kernel's Airoha Ethernet driver where the system failed to properly clear network transmission data during cleanup. This could lead to inconsistent states in the network interface, potentially affecting network stability or data handling for devices using the EN7581 SoC. The issue has been resolved by ensuring the hardware is correctly notified when the transmission queue is empty.
Technical details
A flaw was discovered in the airoha_qdma_cleanup_tx_queue() function within the Airoha Ethernet driver (drivers/net/ethernet/airoha/airoha_eth.c). The routine failed to reset DMA TX descriptors and did not update the TX_DMA_IDX to match TX_CPU_IDX. This omission meant the Network Interface Card (NIC) was not properly notified that the QDMA TX ring was empty during cleanup operations. An attacker could potentially exploit this inconsistent state to cause local denial-of-service or memory corruption, though it is primarily categorized as a stability fix. The issue has been patched in multiple stable branches of the Linux kernel.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 6.11, 6.18.33, 7.0.10
Timeline
- 2026-07-19: disclosed
- 2026-07-19: advisory