# CVE-2026-74745: eth: bnxt: avoid deadlock when canceling IRQ affinity notifier

> A race condition in the bnxt network driver can cause a deadlock during IRQ affinity notifier cancellation, leading to a denial of service.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 26 Aug 2026
- **Updated:** 16 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2026-74745, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-74745, GHSA-4frh-9v5h-wqj6, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-74745

## What is CVE-2026-74745?

CVE-2026-74745 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux, published on 26 Aug 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

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

eth: bnxt: avoid deadlock when canceling IRQ affinity notifier

Unregistering IRQ affinity notifiers waits for the callback synchronously.
bnxt takes the netdev instance lock in the notifier (to restart the queue)
and cancels the work under the same lock. This may obviously deadlock.

Move the restart to the async service task. The queue restart isn't
super time sensitive. Store the new TPH tag, schedule the task.
Safely canceling the service task is already ironed out.

In bnxt_request_irq() the order of registering notifier, affinity and
initial TPH programming has to be inverted. I think it was racy
previously since user may trigger an update as soon as notifier
is installed.

There's a small known gap - if pcie_tph_get_cpu_st() fails at init
and the target tag is 0 we may miss programming the entry.
This does not seem worth fixing, the code has skip-on-failure
all over the place, anyway.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-74745?


## How do I fix CVE-2026-74745?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2026-74745 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-74745 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-74745 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-74745 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux, published on 26 Aug 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-74745 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-74745/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-74745/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-74745
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-74745
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-74745

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-74745/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.