CVE-2025-71152

What the bug is

Problem description ------------------- DSA has a mumbo-jumbo of reference handling of the conduit net device and its kobject which, sadly, is just wrong and doesn't make sense. There are two distinct problems. 1. The OF path, which uses of_find_net_device_by_node(), never releases the elevated refcount on the conduit's kobject. Nominally, the OF and non-OF paths should result in objects having identical reference counts taken, and it is already suspicious that dsa_dev_to_net_device() has a put_device() call which is missing in dsa_port_parse_of(), but we can actually even verify that an issue exists. With CONFIG_DEBUG_KOBJECT_RELEASE=y, if we run this command "before" and "after" applying this patch: (unbind the conduit driver for net device eno2) echo 0000:00:00.2 > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/fsl_enetc/unbind we see these lines in the output diff which appear only with the patch applied: kobject: 'eno2' (ffff002009a3a6b8): kobject_release, parent 0000000000000000 (delayed 1000) kobject: '109' (ffff0020099d59a0): kobject_release, parent 0000000000000000 (delayed 1000) 2. After we find the conduit interface one way (OF) or another (non-OF), it can get unregistered at any time, and DSA remains with a long-lived, but in this case stale, cpu_dp->conduit pointer. Holding the net device's underlying kobject isn't actually of much help, it just prevents it from being freed (but we never need that kobject directly). What helps us to prevent the net device from being unregistered is the parallel netdev reference mechanism (dev_hold() and dev_put()). Actually we actually use that netdev tracker mechanism implicitly on user ports since commit 2f1e8ea726e9 ("net: dsa: link interfaces with the DSA master to get rid of lockdep warnings"), via netdev_upper_dev_link(). But time still passes at DSA switch probe time between the initial of_find_net_device_by_node() code and the user port creation time, time during which the conduit could unregister itself and DSA wouldn't know about it. So we have to run of_find_net_device_by_node() under rtnl_lock() to prevent that from happening, and release the lock only with the netdev tracker having acquired the reference. Do we need to keep the reference until dsa_unregister_switch() / dsa_switch_shutdown()? 1: Maybe yes. A switch device will still be registered even if all user ports failed to probe, see commit 86f8b1c01a0a ("net: dsa: Do not make user port errors fatal"), and the cpu_dp->conduit pointers remain valid. I haven't audited all call paths to see whether they will actually use the conduit in lack of any user port, but if they do, it seems safer to not rely on user ports for that reference. 2. Definitely yes. We support changing the conduit which a user port is associated to, and we can get into a situation where we've moved all user ports away from a conduit, thus no longer hold any reference to it via the net device tracker. But we shouldn't let it go nonetheless - see the next change in relation to dsa_tree_find_first_conduit() and LAG conduits which disappear. We have to be prepared to return to the physical conduit, so the CPU port must explicitly keep another reference to it. This is also to say: the user ports and their CPU ports may not always keep a reference to the same conduit net device, and both are needed. As for the conduit's kobject for the /sys/class/net/ entry, we don't care about it, we can release it as soon as we hold the net device object itself. History and blame attribution ----------------------------- The code has been refactored so many times, it is very difficult to follow and properly attribute a blame, but I'll try to make a short history which I hope to be correct. We have two distinct probing paths: - one for OF, introduced in 2016 i ---truncated---

Where it lives

The fix touches these files. If the subsystem is one you do not use, the practical exposure is lower, though the package is still the vulnerable one.

include/net/dsa.h
net/dsa/dsa.c

What this is

NETWORKING [DSA]MAINTAINERS section matched on include/net/dsa.h · Maintained

Kernel module

dsa_core

Check it on the machine

grep -w CONFIG_NET_DSA /boot/config-$(uname -r)

Reads the booted kernel's own configuration, on the machine and nowhere else. =y is built in, =m is a module, and an is not set line means the code is not there.

lsmod | grep -w dsa_core

Prints a line if that module is loaded right now, and nothing if it is not. One that is not loaded can still be loaded later by anything that needs it.

Show whether Debian builds this, per release

Debian builds this, but not on every flavour. At least one release below builds the code on some of its kernel flavours and not on others, so the answer depends on the architecture and flavour installed.

• bookwormMnot built on amd64/amd64, amd64/cloud-amd64, amd64/rt/amd64, arm64/cloud-arm64, i386/686, i386/686-pae, i386/rt/686-pae, ppc64el/powerpc64le
• trixieMnot built on amd64/amd64, amd64/cloud-amd64, amd64/rt/amd64, arm64/cloud-arm64, armel/rpi, ppc64el/powerpc64le, ppc64el/powerpc64le-64k, riscv64/riscv64, s390x/s390x
• forky, sidMnot built on amd64/amd64, amd64/cloud-amd64, amd64/rt-amd64, arm64/cloud-arm64, loong64/loong64, ppc64el/powerpc64le, ppc64el/powerpc64le-64k, riscv64/riscv64, s390x/s390x

M

a module where it is built at all; some flavours do not build it

Build switch

CONFIG_NET_DSA

From the configuration Debian publishes for every kernel flavour it builds. It covers only the architectures Debian ships a linux-config package for, and nothing about a kernel you built yourself. Debian's own status above stays authoritative about the source package.MAINTAINERS kbuild Makefiles Debian linux-config packages

Signals

Published

2026-01-23 (9 months ago)source

CVSS

no vector published, unrated

Attack vector

not published

EPSS

0.14%, higher than 3.0% of all CVEssource

CISA KEV

not listedthe KEV catalogue

Debian urgency

not yet assignedsource

Subsystem

include/net

Upstream fixes

The versions the CNA records as introducing and fixing this, and the commit for each. source

Introduced	Fixed in	Commit
4.8	6.6.130	ec2b34acb189
4.8	6.12.78	b358fc6ff3b3
4.8	6.18.4	0e766b77ba50
4.8	6.19	06e219f6a706

Debian advisories