ZeroHour

CVE-2026-89596

moderate

Off-by-one out-of-bounds access in Linux kernel forcedeth suspend/resume

CVSS 3.1
7.1 high
EPSS
Published
()
Modified
AI analysis

The Linux kernel's forcedeth driver for NVIDIA nForce/MCP Ethernet controllers has an off-by-one in nv_suspend() and nv_resume(): the save/restore loops run one u32 iteration too many, reading and writing one dword past the end of saved_config_space and past the driver's ioremap'd register window (base + 0x604 on VER3 devices such as the MCP79 in an Apple Macmini3,1). The bug triggers automatically on every S3 suspend/resume cycle; UBSAN reports it as array-index-out-of-bounds at forcedeth.c:6225 (suspend) and :6240 (resume), and kernels built with CONFIG_UBSAN_TRAP=y turn the access into a trap that aborts running kernel code. No observable memory corruption results (the stray element lands in np->name_rx, which is rewritten by nv_request_irq() before use), so the practical impact is kernel aborts on trap-enabled builds plus a stray MMIO write one dword past the mapped device range, reflected in a local-vector CVSS 7.1 with high integrity/availability impact. Affected systems are machines with NVIDIA nForce-family NICs (VER1, VER2, VER3 MACs, including 2008-era Apple Macs using MCP79) running unpatched kernels. No public PoC exists and no exploitation is known; the same off-by-one was fixed in nv_get_regs() in 2012, and this instance was reported on LKML in 2013 but never merged.

What to do: Install a kernel containing the forcedeth fix, which changes the suspend/resume loop bound so exactly register_size bytes are saved and restored; watch your distro's kernel advisories for the patch. Until patched, avoid S3 suspend/resume cycles on nForce/MCP-based machines, especially on kernels built with CONFIG_UBSAN_TRAP=y where the out-of-bounds access aborts kernel code on the first suspend cycle after module load. For detection, look for UBSAN 'array-index-out-of-bounds' splats at forcedeth.c:6225 and :6240 (each location reports only once per module load); as a workaround, blacklist forcedeth and use an add-in NIC.

Affected
Linux kernel, forcedeth driver (drivers/net/ethernet/nvidia/forcedeth.c)
NVIDIA nForce / MCP integrated Ethernet controllers handled by forcedethVER1, VER2, and VER3 device generations (VER3 devices such as MCP79 hit the full out-of-bounds array access; VER1/VER2 stay inside the array but still get the s
Estimated exposure
moderateTens of thousands of systems at most, order of magnitude ~10,000-100,000, and only those using suspend/resume are practically affected — forcedeth only supports NVIDIA nForce/MCP-era chipsets (roughly 2002-2010, including 2008-2010 Apple Macs with MCP79), which are largely retired, and there is no public install telemetry or scan data for this driver, so this is an…

Order-of-magnitude estimate by the model from install counts, market share and public scan data it knows; verify before quoting.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: forcedeth: fix off-by-one when saving/restoring non-PCI config space nv_suspend() and nv_resume() walk the non-PCI configuration space with for (i = 0; i register_size/sizeof(u32); i++) which runs one iteration too many. saved_config_space is declared as u32 saved_config_space[NV_PCI_REGSZ_MAX/4]; and NV_PCI_REGSZ_VER3 is equal to NV_PCI_REGSZ_MAX (0x604), so on a VER3 device register_size/sizeof(u32) is exactly the array length and the last iteration addresses one element past the end. The element it lands on is np->name_rx[0..3]: saved_config_space[] is followed immediately by char name_rx[IFNAMSIZ + 3], and char needs no padding. Nothing observable is corrupted by that, because nv_request_irq() rewrites name_rx with sprintf() before it is ever passed to request_irq(). The bug is the out-of-bounds access itself, which UBSAN reports and which CONFIG_UBSAN_TRAP=y turns into a trap that aborts the running kernel code, plus an MMIO read and, on resume, an MMIO writel() to base + 0x604, one dword past the range the driver mapped: np->base = ioremap(addr, np->register_size); VER1 and VER2 devices stay inside the array, but they too get the stray read and the stray write one dword past their own window. Caught by UBSAN on an Apple Macmini3,1 (MCP79) during a deep S3 cycle. The splat below is trimmed: the build path in the file name, the CPU and taint lines, the Workqueue line, the "?" hint frames, and the frames below device_suspend are all cut. The kernel was tainted, with an out-of-tree nouveau and CPU_OUT_OF_SPEC; forcedeth itself was the stock module. UBSAN: array-index-out-of-bounds in drivers/net/ethernet/nvidia/forcedeth.c:6225:25 index 385 is out of range for type 'u32 [385]' Call Trace: dump_stack_lvl+0x5d/0x80 ubsan_epilogue+0x5/0x2b __ubsan_handle_out_of_bounds.cold+0x54/0x59 __this_module+0xe398c/0xe9010 [forcedeth] pci_pm_suspend+0x80/0x170 dpm_run_callback+0x51/0x160 device_suspend+0x1a2/0x4a0 ... Both loops are hit. UBSAN reports each source location only once per module load (__ubsan_handle_out_of_bounds() calls suppress_report(), which does test_and_set_bit(REPORTED_BIT, ...) on the struct source_location), so the two splats land in the first S3 cycle after the module is loaded and later cycles are silent even though the access still runs off the end every time. In that first cycle line 6225 is reported from pci_pm_suspend and line 6240 from pci_pm_resume. The same off-by-one was fixed in nv_get_regs() by commit ba9aa134287f ("forcedeth: fix buffer overflow") in 2012; these two loops were missed. The suspend and resume side was reported on LKML in September 2013 by Marc Weber, with the same analysis and the same one-character fix, but the patch was attached rather than sent inline and the thread ended there. Use < instead of <=, which saves and restores exactly register_size bytes.

Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H

In the news

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