Attacker Value
Unknown
(0 users assessed)
Exploitability
Unknown
(0 users assessed)
User Interaction
None
Privileges Required
Low
Attack Vector
Local
0

CVE-2025-21682

Disclosure Date: January 31, 2025
Add MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques that apply to this CVE.

Description

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.

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CVSS V3 Severity and Metrics
Base Score:
5.5 Medium
Impact Score:
3.6
Exploitability Score:
1.8
Vector:
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack Vector (AV):
Local
Attack Complexity (AC):
Low
Privileges Required (PR):
Low
User Interaction (UI):
None
Scope (S):
Unchanged
Confidentiality (C):
None
Integrity (I):
None
Availability (A):
High

General Information

Additional Info

Technical Analysis