Bug 2429078 (CVE-2025-68816) - CVE-2025-68816 kernel: Linux kernel: mlx5 firmware tracer vulnerable to arbitrary memory access or denial of service via malformed format strings
Summary: CVE-2025-68816 kernel: Linux kernel: mlx5 firmware tracer vulnerable to arbit...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2025-68816
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-01-13 16:05 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-01-15 12:58 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-01-13 16:05:09 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net/mlx5: fw_tracer, Validate format string parameters

Add validation for format string parameters in the firmware tracer to
prevent potential security vulnerabilities and crashes from malformed
format strings received from firmware.

The firmware tracer receives format strings from the device firmware and
uses them to format trace messages. Without proper validation, bad
firmware could provide format strings with invalid format specifiers
(e.g., %s, %p, %n) that could lead to crashes, or other undefined
behavior.

Add mlx5_tracer_validate_params() to validate that all format specifiers
in trace strings are limited to safe integer/hex formats (%x, %d, %i,
%u, %llx, %lx, etc.). Reject strings containing other format types that
could be used to access arbitrary memory or cause crashes.
Invalid format strings are added to the trace output for visibility with
"BAD_FORMAT: " prefix.


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