CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-80998

HighCVSS 7.5
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.47%

39th percentile - higher than 39% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the bnxt driver's SW USO path can return early with NETDEV_TX_BUSY even though txr->kick_pending was previously set to 1. In that case the driver writes some BDs but never writes the doorbell, causing the TX queue to stall because the device does not know it should perform the TX and generate the completion that would wake the queue.

Risk Assessment

A stalled TX queue leads to loss of network throughput and can trigger a TX watchdog in production. In environments with Broadcom bnxt NICs and SW USO enabled, this can cause network service unavailability.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix that sets txr->kick_pending on success and checks the flag on return from bnxt_sw_udp_gso_xmit. Until then, monitor for TX queue stalls on bnxt NICs.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

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.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS