CVE-2026-98796 Affecting linux-6.12 package, versions <6.12.113-1~deb12u1
Threat Intelligence
The probability is the direct output of the EPSS model, and conveys an overall sense of the threat of exploitation in the wild. The percentile measures the EPSS probability relative to all known EPSS scores. Note: This data is updated daily, relying on the latest available EPSS model version. Check out the EPSS documentation for more details.
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Test your applications- Snyk IDSNYK-DEBIAN12-LINUX612-21434649
- published23 Oct 2026
- disclosed18 Oct 2026
Introduced: 18 Oct 2026
NewCVE-2026-98796 (opens in a new tab)How to fix?
Upgrade Debian:12 linux-6.12 to version 6.12.113-1~deb12u1 or higher.
NVD Description
Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream linux-6.12 package and not the linux-6.12 package as distributed by Debian.
See How to fix? for Debian:12 relevant fixed versions and status.
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.
References
- https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-98796
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/17eafd74de5a31e30361420a2e3ebf64186b77e5
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/42001839e425b2564b7297be579073a13a8fddf6
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6f0c2c4f5e7143eba75153ecc8af3a03f7b6a98b
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/82be3d08de9e14d5aed72377f051adb4f09fd540
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/efc91ab1d97bd991faf50baa0ead35029f341eb9