net: bnxt: ring the doorbell when SW USO exits early
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- —
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- None · None · High
- Fix status
- Fixed
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA.
Summary
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.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.
Affected products
Remediation
- Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 7.2.4, 7.3
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
Not affected: 7 products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-80998
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-853c-vx6w-q6cv
- 2026-10-19 Fix available: Linux/[email protected] · CNA
- 2026-11-06 Affected versions changed · Red Hat
References
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- TI-2022-00125 Integer overflow in kernel KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.4
- TI-2013-01864 The perf_swevent_init function in kernel/events/core.c in the Linux kernel before 3.8.9… KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.4
Sources
- CVE-2026-80998 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-80998 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-853c-vx6w-q6cv · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-80998 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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