* [CVE-2026-90285][LOW] scsi: qla2xxx: Remove redundant VPD flash read in sysfs read path [ Upstream
@ 2026-09-18 1:23 21% AL-KERNEL
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From: AL-KERNEL @ 2026-09-18 1:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: kernel-cve
CVE: CVE-2026-90285
Priority: LOW
AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW
KPANIC flag: NO
Patch: scsi: qla2xxx: Remove redundant VPD flash read in sysfs read path [ Upstream
Commit: ea79c01ef23c2ec3ace8a98ada517d56763814c2
Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=ea79c01ef23c2ec3ace8a98ada517d56763814c2
Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-90285
Analysis date: Thu, 17 Sep 2026 21:23:21 -0400
ActionableScore: 2
ActionableScore lower bound: 1
Actionable bucket: Ordinary Moderate
Manual review required: NO
Summary:
No one-sentence report phrase was found.
======================================================================
ABOUT THIS REPORT
======================================================================
The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-90285 is available here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-90285
The original announcement does not normally provide a security severity
estimate, CVSS assessment, or enough information to determine whether the
reported kernel bug represents a practically relevant security issue.
This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel
vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin. It combines
an autonomous classifier with LLM-assisted technical analysis and a
separate ActionableScore mechanism.
The purpose of this report is to prioritize Linux kernel CVEs before
manual review, identify cases that require prompt investigation, and
support automatic closure of issues that are unlikely to have meaningful
security impact.
Published priority for this report: LOW
Manual review required: NO
A detailed explanation of the methodology and priority rules is included
at the end of this message.
======================================================================
AL-KERNEL CLASSIFICATION RESULT
======================================================================
CVE-2026-90285 LOW https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-90285 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN MODERATE Maybe valid. Check manually. Hints by AL-KERNEL: The best (paranoid) CVSS is 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H';CWE-362;CWE-667;CWE-703;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L';BEST CVSS score: '4.7';DESCR 'qla2x00_sysfs_read_vpd performed a second VPD flash read after optrom_mutex was released, exposing adapter flash access to a race with concurrent optrom operations. The bug is a local synchronization issue in a sysfs read path, not a packet reachable or remote network path. For the CVSS the PR:L value is used for the paranoid score because some deployments may expose VPD reads or delegated adapter management to a less privileged local user, although reliable triggering usually depends on concurrent optrom activity. Impact is mainly denial of service or device state disruption if concurrent flash access causes the driver or adapter operation to fail. There is no clear evidence of kernel memory corruption, information disclosure, or privilege escalation from this patch context.';NO MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 2) YES READ HARDWARE LINUS DECREASED_TO_LOW_FROM_MODERATE_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS_AND_CIANNH NO NO checked
======================================================================
ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS
======================================================================
ActionableScore=2
ActionableScoreLower=1
PrimitiveClass=CLASS_C
RealUAF=NO
HostAdminRequired=UNKNOWN
NamespaceScopedPrivilege=NO
ImportantCandidate=NO
ManualReview=NO
AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES
1. ActionableScore
* Raw conservative score: 1
* Conservative score: 1
* Raw paranoid score: 2
* Paranoid score: 2
* No floor or cap was applied.
* Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**::
2. Signal breakdown
Conservative positive signals:
* +1: Local synchronization or invalid-state issue. qla2x00_sysfs_read_vpd performed a second read_optrom call after optrom_mutex was released, allowing concurrent optrom flash operations to overlap with the redundant VPD read.
Paranoid additional signal:
* +1: Possible device-local availability impact. Concurrent flash or optrom access could plausibly disrupt adapter or driver operation, but the supplied evidence does not establish a reliable host-wide kernel crash.
Negative signals:
* No -2 host-admin penalty was applied because the complete privilege boundary for reading this sysfs VPD path and racing it with other optrom operations is not fully established from the supplied context.
* No race penalty was applied. The issue is a race, but the evidence does not show a narrow or externally uncontrollable timing window beyond the need for concurrent optrom activity.
* No rare-hardware penalty was applied. The bug is hardware-specific to qla2xxx devices, but the score is already low and the supplied evidence does not justify treating this as physical-only exploitation.
Important non-awarded signals:
* RealUAF not awarded. No object lifetime violation, stale pointer use, double free, or refcount misuse is shown.
* Controlled reclaim not demonstrated.
* Arbitrary write not demonstrated.
* Kernel memory corruption not demonstrated.
* Confidentiality and integrity impact not awarded.
* Reliable kernel crash not awarded.
* Remote reachability not established. This is a local sysfs and device-management path, not packet-triggered networking.
* Concrete repeated release/refcount not present.
* Security-boundary bypass not present.
* ImportantCandidate not set because the primitive is a constrained synchronization issue with no established memory corruption or authorization bypass.
3. Reachability analysis
The vulnerable operation is in the qla2xxx sysfs VPD read path. A local actor able to read the relevant sysfs attribute may trigger the redundant read, but the more security-relevant condition also requires concurrent optrom operations against the same adapter.
The exact permissions of the involved sysfs attributes and the concurrent optrom operations are not supplied, so HostAdminRequired is UNKNOWN rather than YES or NO. The path is tied to a host PCI storage adapter and is not namespace-scoped. NamespaceScopedPrivilege is NO because there is no evidence that the complete device sysfs or optrom operation can be performed inside attacker-created namespaces.
No direct network trigger is established. Prior hardware presence is required because the driver path applies to qla2xxx adapters. The race appears repeatable if a local actor can repeatedly access VPD and cause concurrent optrom activity, but the supplied evidence does not establish ordinary unprivileged complete control.
4. Primitive and severity interpretation
The exact primitive is an unlocked redundant hardware flash read after the protected read has already completed under optrom_mutex. This creates a synchronization violation around adapter flash access.
This is not an active structured UAF and not fixed stale storage UAF. It is best classified as CLASS_C because the demonstrated issue is invalid concurrent device access without an independently useful kernel corruption primitive.
The demonstrated consequence is possible adapter or driver disruption. The speculative consequence is stronger device-local failure if concurrent optrom access produces inconsistent hardware state. There is no patch-supported path to privilege escalation, information disclosure, arbitrary kernel write, or kernel memory corruption.
ImportantCandidate is NO because no Class A or meaningful Class B primitive is established. AutoDowngradeAllowed is YES because the issue is constrained, local, hardware-specific, and lacks unresolved memory-corruption or security-boundary leverage.
Likely operational severity is Low to ordinary Moderate.
5. One-sentence report phrase
qla2x00_sysfs_read_vpd performed a redundant VPD flash read after releasing optrom_mutex, allowing local concurrent optrom activity to race with adapter flash access and potentially cause device-local disruption.
6. Manual review recommendation
NO MANUAL CHECK NEEDED
The patch shows a low-risk local synchronization fix with no UAF, no memory corruption, no authorization bypass, and no remote trigger.
7. Call-site confidence
Call-site confidence: medium
======================================================================
UPSTREAM PATCH SUMMARY
======================================================================
Patch: scsi: qla2xxx: Remove redundant VPD flash read in sysfs read path [ Upstream
Commit: ea79c01ef23c2ec3ace8a98ada517d56763814c2
Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=ea79c01ef23c2ec3ace8a98ada517d56763814c2
Changed files:
drivers/scsi/qla2xxx/qla_attr.c
Diff excerpt:
Not included in this email. See the upstream URL for the full patch.
Full patch:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=ea79c01ef23c2ec3ace8a98ada517d56763814c2
======================================================================
DETAILED REPORT METHODOLOGY
======================================================================
The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-90285 can be found here:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-90285
The original CVE announcement normally does not include a security-level
estimate. In particular, it may not contain a CVSS assessment, an impact
level, or enough information to determine whether the reported bug is a
practically relevant security issue. One purpose of this parallel CVE list
is to provide that missing technical and prioritization information.
The original goal of the AL-KERNEL project was to prioritize Linux kernel
CVE analysis automatically before manual review. The system can also help
identify non-security issues that may be suitable for automatic closure.
This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel
vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin.
The first analysis stage combines an autonomous classifier with additional
LLM-based analysis. The autonomous classifier runs locally on a CPU and is
based on a backpropagation neural network. Together, these mechanisms
produce a technical vulnerability description, identify likely weakness
types, estimate CVSS severity, and provide input for ActionableScore.
Two CVSS estimates are retained because incomplete kernel vulnerability
information often permits more than one defensible interpretation:
Conservative CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 4.7
The conservative vector represents a lower-impact interpretation.
The Best/paranoid vector intentionally represents a plausible upper-bound
interpretation and should not automatically be treated as demonstrated
real-world impact.
CVSS may also need to be adjusted for a particular Linux deployment,
because actual reachability, privileges, enabled kernel configuration,
hardware, namespaces, exposed device nodes, and other environmental
conditions can differ significantly between systems.
A separate ActionableScore mechanism evaluates practical remediation
urgency. Its analysis may include reachability, attack prerequisites,
subsystem exposure, memory-corruption characteristics, denial-of-service
reliability, and possible confidentiality, integrity, or
privilege-escalation impact.
Conservative ActionableScore: 1
Paranoid ActionableScore: 2
The final base severity is taken directly from the second tab-separated
field of the AL-KERNEL classification result. ActionableScore does not
replace or independently override that final AL-KERNEL decision, and
if ActionableScore adjusted impact level of ALKERNEL, then you would see
self-readable flags above like INCREASED_TO_HIGH_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCOREHIGHEREQTHAN7.
For an AL-KERNEL result of MODERATE, this report uses the following
additional presentation split:
ActionableScore below 5 -> MODERATE REGULAR
ActionableScore 5 or more -> MODERATE 7.0
The distinction between MODERATE REGULAR and MODERATE 7.0 makes it
possible to identify Moderate issues that should receive manual analysis
and fixes before lower-priority MODERATE REGULAR issues. In many cases,
MODERATE REGULAR fixes may wait for a later rebase or routine update.
There is one override in which MODERATE REGULAR becomes MODERATE 7.0
even when the ActionableScore is below 5. When the AL-KERNEL result
contains the KPANIC flag, a MODERATE result is always presented as
MODERATE 7.0. The KPANIC flag selected with few regexps without
usage of AI at all, so it helps to detect cases when Kernel Crash happens
and similar (to filter False-Negative results from the LLM usage).
KPANIC indicates that a reliable kernel crash, kernel panic, or similarly
serious kernel availability impact was identified by the classification
workflow.
AL-KERNEL base severity for this report: LOW
KPANIC detected for this report: NO
Published priority for this report (same as in Subject): LOW
These results are intended to support engineering triage. They are
machine-generated estimates, and cases marked for manual review should
be validated by a human security engineer before final disposition.
For more info read docs linked from here: https://kernelcve.org/
(and you can submit you own patch there to generate such a report
for non-existant CVE-id yet).
Note that in many cases this AI tool selects higher severity, than
real is (means you can expect Importants instead of Moderate 7.0 or
Moderates 7.0 instead of regular Moderates). If you see such cases,
please use reply email interface to add additional manual analyses
info to this particular CVE.
And please, please, let me know when you see Lows instead of Importants
or Important instead of Low (because particular for such cases I
need to tune this AI tool to make it better for this one and next similar).
My contact email for such notifications is [email protected] (and both
send reply to CVE record itself too and see "reply" button below for howto reply).
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