Live › vulnerability › CVE-2026-99078
Go to dashboardIn the Linux kernel's mlx5e driver for Mellanox ConnectX NICs, an AF_XDP zero-copy receive path that failed a buffer allocation could retry and release buffers already returned to the XSK pool. The sources describe a use-after-free-style stale release, but do not state an attacker-facing impact.
Summary written from the sources below. Check the originals before acting.
First seen by InfraStack 2026-10-23 21:57 UTC. All times on this page are UTC.
Systems running a Linux kernel with the mlx5e driver (Mellanox/NVIDIA ConnectX) that use AF_XDP zero-copy receive on striding RQ. Hosts without ConnectX NICs or without AF_XDP zero-copy sockets are unlikely to be exposed; the sources do not say more.
No product ranges from the sources yet.
uname -r and compare against the kernel version that contains the upstream fixlsmod | grep mlx5 and whether AF_XDP zero-copy sockets are in useEach row is the first time that source carried this signal. The analyst’s rows are its own findings.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net/mlx5e: Prevent stale XSK buffer release on MPWQE refill retry
With AF_XDP on a striding RQ, mlx5e defers releasing XSK buffers until an MPWQE is refilled. If XSK allocation then returns -ENOMEM, actual_wq_head is not advanced and a later NAPI poll retries the same WQE.
mlx5e_free_rx_mpwqe() leaves each released slot marked as releasable. On retry it can therefore call xsk_buff_free() again through stale pointers after the frames have returned to the XSK pool and been reallocated.
Set all skip_release_bitmap bits in the common error path of mlx5e_xsk_alloc_rx_mpwqe(). This matches mlx5e_alloc_rx_mpwqe(). A successful allocation already clears the bitmap after replacing every buffer, so retries become idempotent without changing the success path.
Fault injection forced three consecutive failures for one selected MPWQE. Both an early allocation failure and a partial 8-of-16-buffer unwind released the original 16 XSK buffers only once. Each error left a full bitmap, the following NAPI retry skipped the release, and a later successful allocation cleared it. A 20-second AF_XDP zero-copy pressure run exercised 1,575,262 buffer allocation failures without invalid descriptors, WQE errors, or kernel warnings.
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