Bug 2513288 (CVE-2026-68330) - CVE-2026-68330 kernel: net: airoha: Fix DMA direction for NPU mailbox buffer
Summary: CVE-2026-68330 kernel: net: airoha: Fix DMA direction for NPU mailbox buffer
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-68330
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-08-10 12:29 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-08-13 17:19 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-10 12:29:05 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: airoha: Fix DMA direction for NPU mailbox buffer

airoha_npu_send_msg() always maps the mailbox buffer with DMA_TO_DEVICE,
but some callers expect the NPU to write response data back into the
same buffer:

- airoha_npu_wlan_msg_get() (NPU_OP_GET): NPU writes response into
  the buffer, then the caller reads it via memcpy()
- airoha_npu_ppe_stats_setup() (NPU_OP_SET): NPU writes back
  npu_stats_addr field in the response

On non-cache-coherent architectures like EN7581 (Cortex-A53 without
hardware cache coherency for NPU DMA), DMA_TO_DEVICE unmap is a no-op
— it does not invalidate the CPU cache. If the NPU-written cache line
is still present in the CPU cache when the caller reads the buffer,
the CPU observes stale data instead of the NPU response.

This is a timing-sensitive bug: small mailbox buffers (~24 bytes)
typically fit in a single cache line and may survive in the cache
until the caller reads them, producing silent data corruption rather
than a crash. The bug is more likely to trigger when the caller reads
the response immediately after dma_unmap_single() without intervening
cache-evicting operations.

Fix by using DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL for both map and unmap, which ensures
dma_unmap_single() invalidates the CPU cache on non-coherent systems.
The mailbox buffers are small so there is no performance concern.


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