CVE-2026-72342 net/mlx5e: Fix HV VHCA stats agent registration race

What is CVE-2026-72342?

CVE-2026-72342 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux, published on 15 Aug 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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

net/mlx5e: Fix HV VHCA stats agent registration race

mlx5e_hv_vhca_stats_create() registers the stats agent through mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_create(). The helper publishes the agent in hv_vhca->agents[type] under agents_lock and immediately schedules an asynchronous control invalidation on the HV VHCA workqueue before returning to mlx5e.

The asynchronous invalidation invokes the control agent's invalidate callback, which reads the hypervisor control block and forwards the command to mlx5e_hv_vhca_stats_control(). That callback may either:

- call cancel_delayed_work_sync(&priv->stats_agent.work), or - call queue_delayed_work(priv->wq, &sagent->work, sagent->delay).

However, the delayed_work and priv->stats_agent.agent are only initialized after mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_create() returns to mlx5e:

agent = mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_create(...); /* publish + invalidate */ ... priv->stats_agent.agent = agent; /* too late */ INIT_DELAYED_WORK(&priv->stats_agent.work, ...); /* too late */

If the asynchronous control path runs before the two assignments above, it can:

- Operate on an uninitialized delayed_work whose timer.function is NULL. queue_delayed_work() calls add_timer() unconditionally, so when the timer expires the timer softirq invokes a NULL function pointer. - Re-initialize the timer later through INIT_DELAYED_WORK() while the timer is already enqueued in the timer wheel, corrupting the hlist (entry.pprev cleared while the previous bucket node still points at this entry). - When the worker eventually runs, mlx5e_hv_vhca_stats_work() reads sagent->agent (NULL) and dereferences it inside mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_write().

Fix this by:

- Initializing priv->stats_agent.work before invoking mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_create(), so the work is always in a valid state when the control callback observes it. - Adding a struct mlx5_hv_vhca_agent **ctx_update out-parameter to mlx5_hv_vhca_agent_create(). The helper writes the agent pointer to *ctx_update before publishing into hv_vhca->agents[] and triggering the agents_update flow, so any callback subsequently invoked from that flow already sees a valid priv->stats_agent.agent. This avoids having the control callback participate in agent initialization.

While at it, access priv->stats_agent.agent with READ_ONCE()/WRITE_ONCE() for the cross-CPU access with the worker, and clear priv->stats_agent.buf on the agent_create() failure path.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-72342?

How do I fix CVE-2026-72342?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2026-72342 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-72342 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-72342, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-72342, GHSA-q42x-cp58-jpg7, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-72342.