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CVE-2026-53170 (GCVE-0-2026-53170)

Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-06-25 08:38 – Updated: 2026-08-05 12:33
VLAI
Title
accel/ethosu: reject DMA commands with uninitialized length
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: accel/ethosu: reject DMA commands with uninitialized length cmd_state_init() initializes the command state with memset(0xff), leaving dma->len at U64_MAX to signal missing setup. The only setter is NPU_SET_DMA0_LEN; if userspace omits this command and issues NPU_OP_DMA_START, dma->len remains U64_MAX. In dma_length(), a positive stride added to U64_MAX wraps to a small value. With size0 == 1, check_mul_overflow() does not trigger and dma_length() returns 0 instead of U64_MAX. The caller's U64_MAX check then passes, region_size[] stays 0, and the bounds check in ethosu_job.c is bypassed, allowing hardware to execute DMA with stale physical addresses. Fix by checking for U64_MAX at the start of dma_length() before any arithmetic, consistent with the sentinel value used throughout the driver to detect uninitialized fields.
Severity
8.8 (High)
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Assigner
References
Impacted products
Vendor Product Version CPE status
Linux Linux Affected: 5a5e9c0228e613f0ef2a58b9782d7c0ea8f1e58b , < fb25c76a820ca8a547aa478bfb503da0a11494ab (git)
Affected: 5a5e9c0228e613f0ef2a58b9782d7c0ea8f1e58b , < d9d021218162b6c4fe0bdf42b2b340f1aae23a12 (git)
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Linux Linux Affected: 6.19
Unaffected: 0 , < 6.19 (semver)
Unaffected: 7.0.13 , ≤ 7.0.* (semver)
Unaffected: 7.1 , ≤ * (original_commit_for_fix)
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Show details on NVD website
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              "value": "AV:L - The vulnerable path is reached through local DRM accel device ioctls for Ethos-U command stream creation and job submission. There is no network, adjacent, or physical packet/device insertion path to this parser.\nAC:L - The attacker controls the userspace command stream, can omit NPU_SET_DMA0_LEN, set the DMA mode/stride/size values needed for wraparound, and can prime stale base registers with prior jobs. No race or condition outside the attacker\u2019s control is required.\nPR:L - The Ethos-U ioctls are registered without DRM_ROOT_ONLY, DRM_AUTH, or DRM_MASTER checks, so no kernel capability or administrator privilege is required. Exploitation requires a local low-privileged user able to open the accel device node.\nUI:N - Once the local attacker can issue the ioctls, the command stream validation bypass and hardware job execution occur without any victim action. No user needs to open a file, mount anything, or approve the job.\nS:C - The bug lets a userspace client drive an external DMA-capable NPU using stale DMA addresses outside the per-job GEM/DMA isolation the driver is supposed to enforce. This is a DMA boundary bypass, so impact can extend beyond the vulnerable parser\u2019s normal security authority.\nC:H - A malicious DMA command can use a stale source base address and copy data from another or freed DMA mapping into attacker-controlled memory. In the highest reasonable embedded deployment, stale physical DMA access can expose sensitive kernel or cross-process memory.\nI:H - A malicious DMA command can use a stale destination base address and write attacker-controlled data outside the authorized GEM buffer. This can corrupt other DMA buffers or reused kernel memory and is defensibly an arbitrary memory modification primitive.\nA:H - Invalid or malicious DMA can trigger NPU bus faults, scheduler resets, hangs, or broader kernel memory corruption. Repeated local submission can therefore cause high availability impact."
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}



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Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.

Sightings

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Nomenclature

  • Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
  • Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
  • Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
  • Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
  • Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
  • Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.


Detection rules are retrieved from Rulezet.


Related by attack behaviour

Vulnerabilities whose description is nearest to this one in the vector space of the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-biencoder model. This is a similarity search over the bi-encoder space (plain cosine), not a classification, and it has no measured accuracy.