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HIGH Introduced in 4.15

thunderbolt TeardownOrder DoS

CVE-2026-74691

CVSS 8.8 / 10.0 NVD

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

KernelScan AI5.5MEDIUM

01

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: thunderbolt: Tear down DMA paths before stopping the rings tbnet_tear_down() stops both rings and frees their frame buffers before calling tb_xdomain_disable_paths(). tb_ring_stop() zeroes the ring's descriptor base and tbnet_free_buffers() unmaps and frees the pages the frames sit in, so by the time __tb_path_deactivate_hop() polls the hop's 'pending' bit, anything still in flight has nowhere to drain to. The teardown sequence has been in this order since the driver was added. The setup path has not: commit ff7cd07f3064 ("net: thunderbolt: Enable DMA paths only after rings are enabled") moved the path enable to the end of tbnet_connected_work() and documented why: /* Both logins successful so enable the rings, high-speed DMA * paths and start the network device queue. * * Note we enable the DMA paths last to make sure we have primed * the Rx ring before any incoming packets are allowed to * arrive. */ Teardown was never updated to match, so the rings and the paths now come down in the same order they go up instead of in reverse. On an ASMedia ASM4242 host router the 'pending' bit then never clears: every teardown burns the full 500 ms timeout and __tb_path_deactivate_hop() returns -ETIMEDOUT. Raising the timeout to 5 s does not help, so the hop is not slow to drain, it never drains at all. The failure is invisible above the thunderbolt core. __tb_path_deactivate_hops() is void and only calls tb_port_warn(); tb_path_deactivate(), tb_tunnel_deactivate() and __tb_disconnect_xdomain_paths() are void as well, and tb_disconnect_xdomain_paths() ends in an unconditional "return 0". So tb_xdomain_disable_paths() reports success and the netdev_warn() below it never fires. Repeated teardowns eventually take the XDomain control channel down, after which the peer node is gone and only a power cycle brings the controller back. Deactivating the paths first fixes it. Measured with kretprobes on a stock v6.17 tree with no other patches applied, on a link that was up and had just carried traffic: before: __tb_path_deactivate_hop() returns 0 for the first hop, then -ETIMEDOUT for the second 500335 us later after: 0 for both, 525 us apart Alternating the two orderings ABBA over three load levels, four teardowns per arm: every teardown failed before the change (21 of 21 that ran), none failed after (0 of 24). The before arms ran short because the link died partway through. The same split shows up when the interface is enslaved to a bond instead of just brought down, which is how I ran into this in the first place. Throughput and latency after the change are unchanged. Hosts whose routers drain the hop despite the stale descriptor base see no functional difference, since the paths end up deactivated either way.

02

Engine v0.6.0

Risk summary

A logic error in the Thunderbolt networking driver causes DMA path deactivation to stall on certain host routers because the rings and buffers are torn down before the paths are deactivated. Repeated interface teardowns eventually take the XDomain control channel down, requiring a power cycle to restore the controller. Any local user or service that can bring the Thunderbolt network interface down can trigger this denial of service on systems with affected Thunderbolt hardware.

Affecteddrivers/net/thunderbolt/main.c (thunderbolt networking)

Vulnerability analysis

The Thunderbolt networking driver tears down its DMA rings and frees their buffers before deactivating the DMA paths that feed them, so in-flight packets have nowhere to drain and the path deactivation handshake stalls indefinitely on certain host routers. Each teardown silently times out, and repeated teardowns eventually take the XDomain control channel down, after which the peer node is unreachable and only a power cycle restores the controller. The fix reverses the teardown order to deactivate DMA paths first and then stop the rings and free buffers, mirroring the reverse of the setup sequence. The bug is reachable from any local user or service that can bring the Thunderbolt network interface down or trigger a bond failover on it, and it requires Thunderbolt hardware with an active connection.

03

BranchIntroducedFixed inPatch commit
5.154.155.15.2167cce39109206
6.14.156.1.1830da9a6d27155
6.124.156.12.104103a9b663ac1
6.184.156.18.454dd71cb0d23d
6.64.156.6.152b5a21615f627
7.14.157.1.99a482b2b117e
mainline4.157.268bf02b6b4ad
cip/6.14.156.1.187-cip600da9a6d27155
cip/6.1-rt4.156.1.189-cip61-rt320da9a6d27155
cip/6.124.156.12.104-cip30103a9b663ac1

04

State of the newest release of each Civil Infrastructure Platform SLTS tree, from CIP's own fix records.

CIP treeState
cip/6.12Fixed in 6.12.104-cip30
cip/6.1Fixed in 6.1.187-cip60
cip/6.1-rtFixed in 6.1.189-cip61-rt32
cip/5.10Affected — no CIP fix yet (latest 5.10.271-cip78)
cip/5.10-rtAffected — no CIP fix yet (latest 5.10.268-cip77-rt34)
cip/4.19Affected — no CIP fix yet (latest 4.19.325-cip136)
cip/4.19-rtAffected — no CIP fix yet (latest 4.19.325-cip136-rt50)