CyberRota Analysis
AI-GeneratedThe vulnerability affects the Linux kernel's handling of PCI/MHI-based devices, specifically within the ath11k driver, where a race condition during shutdown can lead to a kernel crash due to a NULL pointer dereference. This issue arises when a reboot overlaps with WLAN firmware crash recovery, potentially destabilizing systems reliant on affected hardware. Organizations using PCI/MHI-based WLAN devices should prioritize addressing this vulnerability to prevent unexpected system crashes during reboot operations.
Original NVD Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: ath11k: cancel SSR work items during PCI shutdown A reboot can crash the kernel if it overlaps with WLAN firmware crash recovery (SSR). The crash is a NULL pointer dereference in the MHI teardown path while freeing DMA-backed MHI contexts. Simplified trace: dma_free_attrs mhi_deinit_dev_ctxt [mhi] ath11k_pci_power_down [ath11k_pci] ath11k_pci_shutdown [ath11k_pci] device_shutdown kernel_restart On the host side, SSR is driven by the MHI RDDM callback, which queues reset_work to perform device recovery. reset_work power-cycles the device by calling ath11k_hif_power_down() followed by ath11k_hif_power_up(). The power-down phase deinitializes MHI and frees DMA resources. Shutdown/reboot runs fully asynchronously with this RDDM-driven SSR recovery flow. As a result, the shutdown path (ath11k_pci_shutdown() -> ath11k_pci_power_down()) can race with the SSR recovery sequence. Fix this by canceling SSR-related work items during PCI shutdown, marking the device as unregistering, and serializing the RDDM callback path that checks and queues reset_work. This ensures that no new SSR recovery work can be queued once teardown has started, and that any in-flight recovery work is fully synchronized before device power-down, preventing MHI teardown and DMA resource freeing from running more than once. Note: This issue only affects PCI/MHI-based devices. AHB-based ath11k devices do not queue reset_work in normal SSR flows. Tested-on: WCN6855 hw2.1 PCI WLAN.HSP.1.1-04866.5-QCAHSPSWPL_V1_V2_SILICONZ_IOE-1