Bug 2532129 (CVE-2026-80998)

Summary: CVE-2026-80998 kernel: net: bnxt: ring the doorbell when SW USO exits early
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: akhatavk, aos-team-art-private, asdas, dpaolell, jdelft, jupierce, lgarciaa, mbiarnes, ppalepu, ppostler, prdhamdh, rhel-process-autobot, sghai, sidsharm, suppawar, vlaad, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: ---
Doc Text:
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's `bnxt` network driver. When processing a burst of packets, the driver may fail to notify the network device (ring the doorbell) if the Software UDP Segmentation Offload (SW USO) path exits prematurely. This oversight can lead to a transmit (TX) queue stall, rendering the network interface unresponsive and causing a Denial of Service (DoS) for network communications.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-09-11 20:47:54 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: bnxt: ring the doorbell when SW USO exits early

When a burst of packets is handed down to the driver, the driver defers
the doorbell to the end by setting txr->kick_pending = 1. The normal TX
path handles this, but the SW USO path can miss it if it returns
early.

If bnxt_sw_udp_gso_xmit runs but returns early with NETDEV_TX_BUSY and
txr->kick_pending was previously set to 1, then the TX queue can
stall because the driver wrote some BDs but never wrote the doorbell.
The device won't know to do the TX which would generate the completion
that would wake the queue back up.

Simplify bnxt_sw_udp_gso_xmit to set txr->kick_pending in its success
case and check the flag on return. The added check after
bnxt_sw_udp_gso_xmit returns ensures that any pending doorbells are
written handling both successful USO and any early returns, which
prevents the TX queue stall mentioned above.

This TX queue stall was observed on a production system with a netdev TX
watchdog informing about the queue stall.