CVE-2026-53300

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: enetc: fix NTMP DMA use-after-free issue

The AI-generated review reported a potential DMA use-after-free issue [1]. If netc_xmit_ntmp_cmd() times out and returns an error, the pending command is not explicitly aborted, while ntmp_free_data_mem() unconditionally frees the DMA buffer. If the buffer has already been reallocated elsewhere, this may lead to silent memory corruption. Because the hardware eventually processes the pending command and perform a DMA write of the response to the physical address of the freed buffer.

To resolve this issue, this patch does the following modifications:

1. Convert cbdr->ring_lock from a spinlock to a mutex

The lock was originally a spinlock in case NTMP operations might be invoked from atomic context. After downstream support for all NTMP tables, no such usage has materialized. A mutex lock is now required because the driver now needs to reclaim used BDs and release associated DMA memory within the lock's context, while dma_free_coherent() might sleep.

2. Introduce software command BD (struct netc_swcbd)

The hardware write-back overwrites the addr and len fields of the BD, so the driver cannot rely on the hardware BD to free the associated DMA memory. The driver now maintains a software shadow BD storing the DMA buffer pointer, DMA address, and size. And netc_xmit_ntmp_cmd() only reclaims older BDs when the number of used BDs reaches NETC_CBDR_CLEAN_WORK (16). The software BD enables correct DMA memory release. With this, struct ntmp_dma_buf and ntmp_free_data_mem() are no longer needed and are removed.

3. Require callers to hold ring_lock across netc_xmit_ntmp_cmd()

netc_xmit_ntmp_cmd() releases the ring_lock before the caller finishes consuming the response. At this point, if a concurrent thread submits a new command, it may trigger ntmp_clean_cbdr() and free the DMA buffer while it is still in use. Move ring_lock ownership to the caller to ensure the response buffer cannot be reclaimed prematurely. So the helpers ntmp_select_and_lock_cbdr() and ntmp_unlock_cbdr() are added.

These changes eliminate the DMA use-after-free condition and ensure safe and consistent BD reclamation and DMA buffer lifecycle management.

Affected Software

Weaknesses

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/37c8933064be714ee672b0a0523c2fd045b73b3d
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/655d9ce9b1d3db0aa5271acb5e5101c66bd0d58b
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3cade698881eb238f88cbbfec82acc2110440a3f

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