published December 4, 2025
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net: core: prevent NULL deref in generic_hwtstamp_ioctl_lower()
The ethtool tsconfig Netlink path can trigger a null pointer
dereference. A call chain such as:
tsconfig_prepare_data() ->
dev_get_hwtstamp_phylib() ->
vlan_hwtstamp_get() ->
generic_hwtstamp_get_lower() ->
generic_hwtstamp_ioctl_lower()
results in generic_hwtstamp_ioctl_lower() being called with
kernel_cfg->ifr as NULL.
The generic_hwtstamp_ioctl_lower() function does not expect
a NULL ifr and dereferences it, leading to a system crash.
Fix this by adding a NULL check for kernel_cfg->ifr in
generic_hwtstamp_ioctl_lower(). If ifr is NULL, return -EINVAL.