From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: AL-KERNEL To: kernel-cve@kernelcve.org Subject: [CVE-2026-53007][LOW] ice: fix potential NULL pointer deref in error path of ice_set_ringparam() [ Upstream Date: Thu, 25 Jun 2026 09:39:54 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-AL-KERNEL-CVE: CVE-2026-53007 X-AL-KERNEL-Priority: LOW X-AL-KERNEL-Severity: LOW X-AL-KERNEL-Base-Severity: LOW X-AL-KERNEL-KPANIC: NO X-AL-KERNEL-ActionableScore: 0 X-AL-KERNEL-ActionableScore-Lower: unknown X-AL-KERNEL-Commit: c54e3c270384829336b2526033d44ce1aa6dc67c List-Id: CVE: CVE-2026-53007 Priority: LOW AL-KERNEL base severity: LOW KPANIC flag: NO Patch: ice: fix potential NULL pointer deref in error path of ice_set_ringparam() [ Upstream Commit: c54e3c270384829336b2526033d44ce1aa6dc67c Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=c54e3c270384829336b2526033d44ce1aa6dc67c Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-53007 Analysis date: Thu, 25 Jun 2026 09:39:54 -0400 ActionableScore: 0 ActionableScore lower bound: unknown Actionable bucket: Ordinary Moderate / Low-like Manual review required: NO Summary: No one-sentence report phrase was found. ====================================================================== ABOUT THIS REPORT ====================================================================== The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-53007 is available here: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-53007 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-2026-53007 LOW CHECK 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-476;CWE-754;CWE-703;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H';BEST CVSS score: '4.7';DESCR 'A NULL pointer dereference can occur in the Intel ice driver error path when ice_set_ringparam() nulls the temporary TX ring tstamp_ring pointer but leaves ICE_TX_RING_FLAGS_TXTIME set. If the later ice_setup_tx_ring() call fails, the cleanup path may treat timestamp offload state as active and dereference the NULL tstamp_ring during ring teardown, causing a kernel crash. For the CVSS the PR:L is used in the paranoid score because a process with delegated CAP_NET_ADMIN or container network administration may be enough to reach the ethtool control path, although normal systems restrict this to administrators. The issue is not directly network reachable and is triggered through local device configuration rather than packet traffic. Impact is denial of service only, with no clear UAF, OOB access, information leak, or privilege escalation primitive supported by the patch context.';NO MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate / Low-like (with actual score 0) MAYBE REMOTE NULLPTR SIMPLEFIX ERRORPATH NETWORK HARDWARE TEST DECREASED_TO_MODERATE_REGULAR_FROM_MODERATE7_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS_AND_CIANNH DECREASED_TO_LOW_FROM_MODERATE_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCORELESSTHAN3 - - checked ====================================================================== ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS ====================================================================== ActionableScore=0 1. ActionableScore * Conservative score: 0 * Paranoid score: 0 * Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate / Low-like**:: 2. Signal breakdown * Reliable kernel crash / strong DoS: +1. The bug can cause a NULL pointer dereference in the ice driver unwind path if `ICE_TX_RING_FLAGS_TXTIME` remains set while `tstamp_ring` is NULL. * Requires admin/root/CAP_NET_ADMIN in typical deployments: -2. The affected path is `ice_set_ringparam()`, normally reached through ethtool device configuration requiring administrative network privileges. * Hard or unreliable special condition: -1. Triggering requires the TXTIME flag state plus a later `ice_setup_tx_ring()` failure in the error path. * Physical-only or rare hardware-only condition: -2. The issue depends on Intel ice hardware with E830 TXTIME support and a specific driver configuration path. * No memory corruption signal. This is a NULL dereference, not UAF, double free, OOB write, object reuse, or attacker-controlled overwrite. * No confidentiality or integrity signal. The patch supports DoS only. 3. Reachability analysis A local privileged user or process with CAP_NET_ADMIN can potentially trigger the path by changing NIC ring parameters. In delegated namespace or container setups, CAP_NET_ADMIN may make the practical PR closer to PR:L for CVSS, but it still requires administrative control over the network device path. The issue is not network-triggerable by packets. It is not default-exposed on all systems because it depends on a specific Intel ice device feature and an error during ring setup. 4. Severity interpretation This behaves like a low-end Moderate or Low-like local privileged DoS. The realistic impact is a kernel crash through NULL pointer dereference. There is no supported privilege escalation path, no UAF, no OOB write, no page-cache corruption, and no sensitive security-boundary bypass. The paranoid interpretation still remains DoS-only because the primitive is an invalid NULL dereference in a constrained driver error path. 5. One-sentence report phrase A NULL pointer dereference in the Intel ice driver error unwind path can crash the kernel when TXTIME state remains enabled after the timestamp ring pointer is cleared, but exploitation requires local network device administration and specific hardware or failure conditions. 6. Manual review recommendation NO MANUAL CHECK NEEDED. This is a constrained local privileged driver error-path DoS with no evidence of memory corruption, privilege escalation, remote reachability, or sensitive-object access. ====================================================================== UPSTREAM PATCH SUMMARY ====================================================================== Patch: ice: fix potential NULL pointer deref in error path of ice_set_ringparam() [ Upstream Commit: c54e3c270384829336b2526033d44ce1aa6dc67c Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=c54e3c270384829336b2526033d44ce1aa6dc67c Changed files: drivers/net/ethernet/intel/ice/ice_ethtool.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=c54e3c270384829336b2526033d44ce1aa6dc67c ====================================================================== DETAILED REPORT METHODOLOGY ====================================================================== The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-53007 can be found here: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-53007 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:H 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: unknown Paranoid ActionableScore: 0 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 alexanjelausa@gmail.com (and both send reply to CVE record itself too and see "reply" button below for howto reply).