NULL pointer dereference in Linux

CVE-2025-21682

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: eth: bnxt: always recalculate features after XDP clearing, fix null-deref Recalculate features when XDP is detached. Before: # ip li set dev eth0 xdp obj xdp_dummy.bpf.o sec xdp # ip li set dev eth0 xdp off # ethtool -k eth0 | grep gro rx-gro-hw: off [requested on] After: # ip li set dev eth0 xdp obj xdp_dummy.bpf.o sec xdp # ip li set dev eth0 xdp off # ethtool -k eth0 | grep gro rx-gro-hw: on The fact that HW-GRO doesn't get re-enabled automatically is just a minor annoyance. The real issue is that the features will randomly come back during another reconfiguration which just happens to invoke netdev_update_features(). The driver doesn't handle reconfiguring two things at a time very robustly. Starting with commit 98ba1d931f61 ("bnxt_en: Fix RSS logic in __bnxt_reserve_rings()") we only reconfigure the RSS hash table if the "effective" number of Rx rings has changed. If HW-GRO is enabled "effective" number of rings is 2x what user sees. So if we are in the bad state, with HW-GRO re-enablement "pending" after XDP off, and we lower the rings by / 2 - the HW-GRO rings doing 2x and the ethtool -L doing / 2 may cancel each other out, and the: if (old_rx_rings != bp->hw_resc.resv_rx_rings && condition in __bnxt_reserve_rings() will be false. The RSS map won't get updated, and we'll crash with: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000168 RIP: 0010:__bnxt_hwrm_vnic_set_rss+0x13a/0x1a0 bnxt_hwrm_vnic_rss_cfg_p5+0x47/0x180 __bnxt_setup_vnic_p5+0x58/0x110 bnxt_init_nic+0xb72/0xf50 __bnxt_open_nic+0x40d/0xab0 bnxt_open_nic+0x2b/0x60 ethtool_set_channels+0x18c/0x1d0 As we try to access a freed ring. The issue is present since XDP support was added, really, but prior to commit 98ba1d931f61 ("bnxt_en: Fix RSS logic in __bnxt_reserve_rings()") it wasn't causing major issues.

Published 2025-01-31 · last modified 2026-07-30.