CVE-2026-23348 PUBLISHED

cxl: Fix race of nvdimm_bus object when creating nvdimm objects

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 13.01.2026 Published: 25.03.2026 Updated: 25.03.2026

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

cxl: Fix race of nvdimm_bus object when creating nvdimm objects

Found issue during running of cxl-translate.sh unit test. Adding a 3s sleep right before the test seems to make the issue reproduce fairly consistently. The cxl_translate module has dependency on cxl_acpi and causes orphaned nvdimm objects to reprobe after cxl_acpi is removed. The nvdimm_bus object is registered by the cxl_nvb object when cxl_acpi_probe() is called. With the nvdimm_bus object missing, __nd_device_register() will trigger NULL pointer dereference when accessing the dev->parent that points to &nvdimm_bus->dev.

[ 192.884510] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 000000000000006c [ 192.895383] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS edk2-20250812-19.fc42 08/12/2025 [ 192.897721] Workqueue: cxl_port cxl_bus_rescan_queue [cxl_core] [ 192.899459] RIP: 0010:kobject_get+0xc/0x90 [ 192.924871] Call Trace: [ 192.925959] <TASK> [ 192.926976] ? pm_runtime_init+0xb9/0xe0 [ 192.929712] __nd_device_register.part.0+0x4d/0xc0 [libnvdimm] [ 192.933314] __nvdimm_create+0x206/0x290 [libnvdimm] [ 192.936662] cxl_nvdimm_probe+0x119/0x1d0 [cxl_pmem] [ 192.940245] cxl_bus_probe+0x1a/0x60 [cxl_core] [ 192.943349] really_probe+0xde/0x380

This patch also relies on the previous change where devm_cxl_add_nvdimm_bridge() is called from drivers/cxl/pmem.c instead of drivers/cxl/core.c to ensure the dependency of cxl_acpi on cxl_pmem.

  1. Set probe_type of cxl_nvb to PROBE_FORCE_SYNCHRONOUS to ensure the driver is probed synchronously when add_device() is called.
  2. Add a check in __devm_cxl_add_nvdimm_bridge() to ensure that the cxl_nvb driver is attached during cxl_acpi_probe().
  3. Take the cxl_root uport_dev lock and the cxl_nvb->dev lock in devm_cxl_add_nvdimm() before checking nvdimm_bus is valid.
  4. Set cxl_nvdimm flag to CXL_NVD_F_INVALIDATED so cxl_nvdimm_probe() will exit with -EBUSY.

The removal of cxl_nvdimm devices should prevent any orphaned devices from probing once the nvdimm_bus is gone.

[ dj: Fixed 0-day reported kdoc issue. ] [ dj: Fix cxl_nvb reference leak on error. Gregory (kreview-0811365) ]

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 8fdcb1704f61a8fd9be0f3849a174d084def0666 to 5fc4e150c5ada5f7d20d8f9f1b351f10481fbdf7 (excl.)
  • affected from 8fdcb1704f61a8fd9be0f3849a174d084def0666 to 5b230daeee420833287cc77314439903e5312f10 (excl.)
  • affected from 8fdcb1704f61a8fd9be0f3849a174d084def0666 to 96a1fd0d84b17360840f344826897fa71049870e (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 5.14 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 5.14 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.17 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.19.7 to 6.19.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.0-rc2 to * (incl.)

References