CVE Watchtower

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CVE-2026-98796NVD

Vulnerability Summary

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

net: ethernet: mtk_eth_soc: allocate dummy netdev sooner

The RX rings and the shared NAPI are carried by an internal "dummy" netdev
(eth->dummy_dev). mtk_probe() creates that dummy device, and adds the
shared tx/rx NAPI to it, only after the MAC netdevs have been registered.
That order has been there since the MT7623 support was added and leaves a
window in which the netdevs are visible to the network core before the
shared NAPI and the dummy device exist.

If anything brings the first netdev up during that window (e.g. netifd
opening the WAN link the instant the interface is registered), the
first-open path runs without them. On NETSYS v2 and later SoCs
mtk_rx_alloc() -> __xdp_rxq_info_reg() then dereferences eth->dummy_dev ==
NULL:

WARNING: CPU: ... Missing net_device from driver

in net/core/xdp.c and mtk_open() fails with -ENODEV. On NETSYS v1 SoCs
(MT7621/MT7622/MT7623/MT7629) there is no page pool, so the same open
instead calls napi_enable() on a napi_struct that netif_napi_add() has not
initialised yet and dereferences a NULL napi->dev.

Allocate the dummy netdev and add the shared tx/rx NAPI to it before the
register_netdev() loop. Both the dummy-allocation failure and a
register_netdev() failure now unwind through mtk_unreg_dev(), which
unregisters the net_device notifiers and the netdevs registered so far,
stopping a concurrently-opened netdev (ndo_stop) and its NAPI before the
dummy carrier is freed.

A netdev that opened during the window can also have queued the
frame-engine reset worker (via the tx watchdog or phylink), so the probe
error path now cancels eth->pending_work before freeing the shared state,
as mtk_cleanup() already does on remove.
Severity Level
UNKNOWN
Published Date
Oct 18, 2026
Last Modified
Oct 21, 2026
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation yet
EPSS Score (30-Day)
0.17%Probability
Root Weakness (CWE)
N/A

Affected & Patched Versions

Affected Versions
Not provided by NVD for this CVE.
Patched Versions
Not provided by NVD for this CVE.
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🚨All New CVEs — Be the first to know.
📈EPSS Spike Alerts — Catch rising risk before it peaks.
🎯Custom EPSS/CVSS — Filter noise, focus on risk.
🛡️Exploit Intel — A 2nd confirmed-exploit signal beyond KEV.
🐙GitHub Issues — Auto-tracked, no duplicates.
📬Weekly Digest — One clean summary, not inbox spam.
🏷️Watchlist Groups — Tag alerts by team (Infra/AppSec/SOC).
💬Webhooks — Slack & Teams integration.
🔀Smart Routing — Critical alerts to one channel, rest to another.
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