CVE-2022-50498: eth: alx: take rtnl_lock on resume

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-10-04 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: eth: alx: take rtnl_lock on resume Zbynek reports that alx trips an rtnl assertion on resume: RTNL: assertion failed at net/core/dev.c (2891) RIP: 0010:netif_set_real_num_tx_queues+0x1ac/0x1c0 Call Trace: <TASK> __alx_open+0x230/0x570 [alx] alx_resume+0x54/0x80 [alx] ? pci_legacy_resume+0x80/0x80 dpm_run_callback+0x4a/0x150 device_resume+0x8b/0x190 async_resume+0x19/0x30 async_run_entry_fn+0x30/0x130 process_one_work+0x1e5/0x3b0 indeed the driver does not hold rtnl_lock during its internal close and re-open functions during suspend/resume. Note that this is not a huge bug as the driver implements its own locking, and does not implement changing the number of queues, but we need to silence the splat.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.14 before 5.15.75; from 5.16 before 5.19.17; from 6.0 before 6.0.3 — fixed in 5.15.75, 5.19.17, 6.0.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.15.75, 5.19.17, 6.0.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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