CVE-2023-54090
CriticalCVSS 9.8Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk41th percentile - higher than 41% of all known CVEs
Summary
In the Linux kernel, a vulnerability in the ixgbe driver causes a system panic during XDP_TX on machines with more than 64 CPUs. The issue stems from incorrect indexing of XDP TX rings, which does not apply the modulo 64 limit, leading to an out-of-bounds array access and NULL pointer dereference. Additionally, the locking mechanism (ixgbe_xdp_locking_key) is incorrectly decremented during configuration changes, allowing the bug to trigger.
Risk Assessment
The risk involves a potential kernel panic on servers with more than 64 cores when using XDP programs in XDP_TX mode. This can disrupt network services and cause system unavailability, especially critical in production environments.
Recommendation
It is recommended to immediately update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix for CVE-2023-54090. If updating is not possible, avoid using XDP_TX on systems with more than 64 CPUs or limit the number of active cores to 64.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
See all- CVE-2026-43603Medium
A NULL pointer dereference in the Linux GPU driver could potentially lead to a kernel crash. This may result in a denial of service on the affected system.
- CVE-2026-99270High
A use-after-free (UAF) vulnerability exists in the Linux kernel's reqsk_timer_handler() function. When TCP socket migration fails at inet_ehash_insert(), the code jumps to the no_ownership label and immediately frees the new reqsk via __reqsk_free() without stopping its timer, potentially leading to a UAF.
- CVE-2026-99269High
In the Linux kernel sched_ext scheduler, a task can be found on a non-local DSQ while the CPU that dispatched it is still running ops.dequeue() and hasn't cleared SCX_OPSS_DISPATCHING. The DSQ consume and move paths don't wait for dispatch to finish and can operate on the task concurrently with the dispatcher. The fix adds scx_wait_dispatching() before operating on the task.
- CVE-2026-99268Unknown
In io_uring with IORING_SETUP_DEFER_TASKRUN, completions are queued as local work and only become CQEs when the submitter enters the kernel to wait for events. io_uring_poll() reports EPOLLIN if local work is pending, but only if the work exists at call time; after DEFER_TASKRUN was added, the ->poll_wq wakeup was replaced by directly waking the submitter, so poll() can sleep despite pending work. The fix wakes ->poll_wq when the first entry is put on the work list, using an RCU callback when needed.
- CVE-2026-99267Unknown
In io_uring NAPI with dynamic tracking, a NAPI id not seen for a minute should be dropped from the ring's busy-poll list. However, the timeout is computed incorrectly — SEC_CONVERSION is used instead of the number of jiffies per second, giving about eight years for HZ=1000 and overflowing on 32-bit systems. As a result, entries are never removed and every wait polls all historical ids.
- CVE-2026-99266Unknown
In io_uring zcrx, io_zcrx_queue_cqe() computes the buffer offset in its area from net_iov_idx(), which is an unsigned int, so the shift is done in 32 bits and only the result is widened to the u64 placed in the CQE. An area can be up to 1 TB, so for every niov beyond the first 4 GB the CQE points the application at a buffer 4 GB (or a multiple) below the correct one. The application reads wrong data and returns a buffer it doesn't own via the refill queue while the real one is never given back.
- CVE-2026-99265Unknown
In io_uring/openclose, io_pipe_fixed() installs both ends of the pipe in the fixed file table, drops ->uring_lock, and copies the slot numbers to the application. If that faults, it takes the lock again and removes whatever is in these slots. If the request is run by io-wq, the lock really is dropped and the slots are visible to others; by the time the error path gets to them, they may have been closed and reused (by IORING_OP_CLOSE, direct open/accept, or IORING_REGISTER_FILES_UPDATE), causing removal of a file unrelated to the failed request. The fix performs the copy with the lock held.
- CVE-2026-99264High
A bug was fixed in the Linux kernel's io_uring/net handling of recv retries on uncommitted buffers. When a receive was retried after a partial transfer, the kernel could hand out buffer memory that the retried request was still writing to, causing data overwrites. The request is now completed with the bytes received instead of retried, and MSG_WAITALL is no longer honoured for incremental buffers or multi-buffer bundles.
- CVE-2026-99263Unknown
In io_uring/poll, if a wakeup sets IO_POLL_RETRY_FLAG between the owning task consuming the existing instance of IO_POLL_RETRY_FLAG and the loop check in io_poll_check_events(), request processing stalls until an unrelated wakeup arrives. The fix uses atomic_cmpxchg instead of atomic_sub_return to guarantee both the count v and poll_refs are 0 and no wakeups are missed.
- CVE-2026-99262Unknown
In io_uring/timeout, an IORING_OP_TIMEOUT run by io-wq due to IOSQE_ASYNC has the same problem as poll, futex, and waitid. io_wq_submit_work() checks IO_WQ_WORK_CANCEL only once before issuing the request; a cancel in between flags the work, gets -EALREADY, and searches ->timeout_list in vain while the worker adds the request and starts the timer. Nobody checks the flag again and the timeout runs its course, and at ring exit a task can get stuck for the full duration. The fix checks the flag under ->timeout_lock and fails the request if set.
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ixgbe: Fix panic during XDP_TX with > 64 CPUs Commit 4fe815850bdc ("ixgbe: let the xdpdrv work with more than 64 cpus") adds support to allow XDP programs to run on systems with more than 64 CPUs by locking the XDP TX rings and indexing them using cpu % 64 (IXGBE_MAX_XDP_QS). Upon trying this out patch on a system with more than 64 cores, the kernel paniced with an array-index-out-of-bounds at the return in ixgbe_determine_xdp_ring in ixgbe.h, which means ixgbe_determine_xdp_q_idx was just returning the cpu instead of cpu % IXGBE_MAX_XDP_QS. An example splat: ========================================================================== UBSAN: array-index-out-of-bounds in /var/lib/dkms/ixgbe/5.18.6+focal-1/build/src/ixgbe.h:1147:26 index 65 is out of range for type 'ixgbe_ring *[64]' ========================================================================== BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000058 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI CPU: 65 PID: 408 Comm: ksoftirqd/65 Tainted: G IOE 5.15.0-48-generic #54~20.04.1-Ubuntu Hardware name: Dell Inc. PowerEdge R640/0W23H8, BIOS 2.5.4 01/13/2020 RIP: 0010:ixgbe_xmit_xdp_ring+0x1b/0x1c0 [ixgbe] Code: 3b 52 d4 cf e9 42 f2 ff ff 66 0f 1f 44 00 00 0f 1f 44 00 00 55 b9 00 00 00 00 48 89 e5 41 57 41 56 41 55 41 54 53 48 83 ec 08 <44> 0f b7 47 58 0f b7 47 5a 0f b7 57 54 44 0f b7 76 08 66 41 39 c0 RSP: 0018:ffffbc3fcd88fcb0 EFLAGS: 00010282 RAX: ffff92a253260980 RBX: ffffbc3fe68b00a0 RCX: 0000000000000000 RDX: ffff928b5f659000 RSI: ffff928b5f659000 RDI: 0000000000000000 RBP: ffffbc3fcd88fce0 R08: ffff92b9dfc20580 R09: 0000000000000001 R10: 3d3d3d3d3d3d3d3d R11: 3d3d3d3d3d3d3d3d R12: 0000000000000000 R13: ffff928b2f0fa8c0 R14: ffff928b9be20050 R15: 000000000000003c FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff92b9dfc00000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 0000000000000058 CR3: 000000011dd6a002 CR4: 00000000007706e0 DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 PKRU: 55555554 Call Trace: <TASK> ixgbe_poll+0x103e/0x1280 [ixgbe] ? sched_clock_cpu+0x12/0xe0 __napi_poll+0x30/0x160 net_rx_action+0x11c/0x270 __do_softirq+0xda/0x2ee run_ksoftirqd+0x2f/0x50 smpboot_thread_fn+0xb7/0x150 ? sort_range+0x30/0x30 kthread+0x127/0x150 ? set_kthread_struct+0x50/0x50 ret_from_fork+0x1f/0x30 </TASK> I think this is how it happens: Upon loading the first XDP program on a system with more than 64 CPUs, ixgbe_xdp_locking_key is incremented in ixgbe_xdp_setup. However, immediately after this, the rings are reconfigured by ixgbe_setup_tc. ixgbe_setup_tc calls ixgbe_clear_interrupt_scheme which calls ixgbe_free_q_vectors which calls ixgbe_free_q_vector in a loop. ixgbe_free_q_vector decrements ixgbe_xdp_locking_key once per call if it is non-zero. Commenting out the decrement in ixgbe_free_q_vector stopped my system from panicing. I suspect to make the original patch work, I would need to load an XDP program and then replace it in order to get ixgbe_xdp_locking_key back above 0 since ixgbe_setup_tc is only called when transitioning between XDP and non-XDP ring configurations, while ixgbe_xdp_locking_key is incremented every time ixgbe_xdp_setup is called. Also, ixgbe_setup_tc can be called via ethtool --set-channels, so this becomes another path to decrement ixgbe_xdp_locking_key to 0 on systems with more than 64 CPUs. Since ixgbe_xdp_locking_key only protects the XDP_TX path and is tied to the number of CPUs present, there is no reason to disable it upon unloading an XDP program. To avoid confusion, I have moved enabling ixgbe_xdp_locking_key into ixgbe_sw_init, which is part of the probe path.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

