6.5
MEDIUM CVSS 3.1
CVE-2026-90590
Permanent loss of transmit capability in the NXP ENET QoS Ethernet driver after an Ethernet link drop
Description

The NXP ENET QoS Ethernet driver in drivers/ethernet/eth_nxp_enet_qos serialises transmission with a binary semaphore, data->tx.tx_sem, taken in eth_nxp_enet_qos_tx() and returned only by the transmit-completion interrupt handler tx_dma_done(). A frame that has been handed to the transmit DMA when the Ethernet link goes down is never written back, so that completion interrupt never arrives. The PHY callback eth_nxp_enet_qos_phy_cb() reacts to carrier loss only by calling net_eth_carrier_set(); it does not stop the DMA, take the descriptors back or release the outstanding frame, and no timeout exists to do so. The trigger is a link-down/link-up transition that lands while a frame is under the transmit DMA. It can be produced by anyone who controls the link partner or the cable — for example by administratively downing and restoring the attached switch port, or by restarting auto-negotiation from a peer device — and can be made reliable by generating traffic that keeps the device transmitting and repeating the transition. No credentials or user interaction are required, and the trigger is at the link layer rather than over IP. Because the semaphore is never given back, every subsequent call to eth_nxp_enet_qos_tx() fails with -EBUSY for the remaining life of the boot; restoring the link does not recover the interface, since the link-up path only rewrites MAC_CONFIGURATION. The affected interface continues to receive but can no longer transmit anything — no ARP replies, no TCP acknowledgements, no DHCP renewals — until the device is reset. The net_pkt and the net_buf fragments of the abandoned frame are likewise never unreferenced and never return to their pools. The security-relevant property is persistence: a momentary link flap leaves the interface permanently unable to send, so the denial of service outlasts the attacker's access to the link. There is no confidentiality or integrity impact. The fix adds a claim/release pair around the outstanding packet so that completion and abandonment are mutually exclusive, aborts an outstanding frame from the PHY callback on carrier loss (stopping the DMA, flushing the MTL transmit queue and reinitialising the descriptor ring), and arms a transmit watchdog, CONFIG_ETH_NXP_ENET_QOS_TX_TIMEOUT_MS, so that any non-completing DMA — not only a carrier loss — reclaims the transmit slot and the packet.

INFO

Published Date :

Nov. 9, 2026, 10:04 p.m.

Last Modified :

Nov. 9, 2026, 10:04 p.m.

Remotely Exploit :

No

Source :

zephyr
Affected Products

The following products are affected by CVE-2026-90590 vulnerability. Even if cvefeed.io is aware of the exact versions of the products that are affected, the information is not represented in the table below.

ID Vendor Product Action
1 Zephyrproject zephyr
2 Zephyrproject zephyr
CVSS Scores
The Common Vulnerability Scoring System is a standardized framework for assessing the severity of vulnerabilities in software and systems. We collect and displays CVSS scores from various sources for each CVE.
Score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Score Impact Score Source
CVSS 3.1 MEDIUM e2e69745-5e70-4e92-8431-deb5529a81ad
CVSS 3.1 MEDIUM MITRE-CVE
Solution
Address a denial of service by fixing semaphore management and transmission completion.
  • Ensure outstanding frames are reclaimed on carrier loss.
  • Abort outstanding frames from the PHY callback.
  • Implement transmit watchdog for non-completing DMA.
  • Apply vendor patches to the NXP ENET QoS driver.

We scan GitHub repositories to detect new proof-of-concept exploits. Following list is a collection of public exploits and proof-of-concepts, which have been published on GitHub (sorted by the most recently updated).

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EPSS is a daily estimate of the probability of exploitation activity being observed over the next 30 days. Following chart shows the EPSS score history of the vulnerability.