CVE-2025-38086 — net: ch9200: fix uninitialised access during mii_nway_restart

Affected: Linux

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: ch9200: fix uninitialised access during mii_nway_restart

In mii_nway_restart() the code attempts to call mii->mdio_read which is ch9200_mdio_read(). ch9200_mdio_read() utilises a local buffer called "buff", which is initialised with control_read(). However "buff" is conditionally initialised inside control_read():

if (err == size) { memcpy(data, buf, size); }

If the condition of "err == size" is not met, then "buff" remains uninitialised. Once this happens the uninitialised "buff" is accessed and returned during ch9200_mdio_read():

return (buff[0] | buff[1] << 8);

The problem stems from the fact that ch9200_mdio_read() ignores the return value of control_read(), leading to uinit-access of "buff".

To fix this we should check the return value of control_read() and return early on error.

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CVE-2025-38086 — net: ch9200: fix uninitialised access during mii_nway_restart