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CVE-2024-50018

MediumCVSS 5.5 / 10
Published Oct 21, 2024·Last modified Mar 23, 2026
Affected Components(0)

No affected components available

Description

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

net: napi: Prevent overflow of napi_defer_hard_irqs

In commit 6f8b12d661d0 ("net: napi: add hard irqs deferral feature") napi_defer_irqs was added to net_device and napi_defer_irqs_count was added to napi_struct, both as type int.

This value never goes below zero, so there is not reason for it to be a signed int. Change the type for both from int to u32, and add an overflow check to sysfs to limit the value to S32_MAX.

The limit of S32_MAX was chosen because the practical limit before this patch was S32_MAX (anything larger was an overflow) and thus there are no behavioral changes introduced. If the extra bit is needed in the future, the limit can be raised.

Before this patch:

$ sudo bash -c 'echo 2147483649 > /sys/class/net/eth4/napi_defer_hard_irqs' $ cat /sys/class/net/eth4/napi_defer_hard_irqs -2147483647

After this patch:

$ sudo bash -c 'echo 2147483649 > /sys/class/net/eth4/napi_defer_hard_irqs' bash: line 0: echo: write error: Numerical result out of range

Similarly, /sys/class/net/XXXXX/tx_queue_len is defined as unsigned:

include/linux/netdevice.h: unsigned int tx_queue_len;

And has an overflow check:

dev_change_tx_queue_len(..., unsigned long new_len):

if (new_len != (unsigned int)new_len) return -ERANGE;

Risk Scores
Base Score
5.5

The vulnerability requires local access to the device to be exploited. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker needs basic access or low-level privileges. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the availability of the system.

Threat Intelligence
5.1

Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.

EPSS
N/A

Probability that this vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days.

Exploit
Not available

We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.

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