Bug 2356660 (CVE-2025-21921) - CVE-2025-21921 kernel: net: ethtool: netlink: Allow NULL nlattrs when getting a phy_device
Summary: CVE-2025-21921 kernel: net: ethtool: netlink: Allow NULL nlattrs when getting...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2025-21921
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
low
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2025-04-01 16:04 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2025-04-02 02:25 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-04-01 16:04:51 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: ethtool: netlink: Allow NULL nlattrs when getting a phy_device

ethnl_req_get_phydev() is used to lookup a phy_device, in the case an
ethtool netlink command targets a specific phydev within a netdev's
topology.

It takes as a parameter a const struct nlattr *header that's used for
error handling :

       if (!phydev) {
               NL_SET_ERR_MSG_ATTR(extack, header,
                                   "no phy matching phyindex");
               return ERR_PTR(-ENODEV);
       }

In the notify path after a ->set operation however, there's no request
attributes available.

The typical callsite for the above function looks like:

	phydev = ethnl_req_get_phydev(req_base, tb[ETHTOOL_A_XXX_HEADER],
				      info->extack);

So, when tb is NULL (such as in the ethnl notify path), we have a nice
crash.

It turns out that there's only the PLCA command that is in that case, as
the other phydev-specific commands don't have a notification.

This commit fixes the crash by passing the cmd index and the nlattr
array separately, allowing NULL-checking it directly inside the helper.


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