What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-97963: net: stmmac: initialize ptp_lock at probe time

• Severity: unknown
• 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: 2026-09-25 · updated 2026-10-19

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: stmmac: initialize ptp_lock at probe time priv->ptp_lock is only initialized in stmmac_ptp_register(), which runs during __stmmac_open(). However, the lock is also used while the interface is down and has never been opened: tc_taprio_configure() invokes the PTP gettime64() callback to compute the EST base time when offloading a TAPRIO schedule, and stmmac_get_time() takes priv->ptp_lock. Using an uninitialized rwlock is undefined behaviour. Move the rwlock_init() to __stmmac_dvr_probe(), together with the other private locks, so that ptp_lock is always valid regardless of the interface state.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: 5.6 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 7.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0338c68e22abd2ee509ec2e32508a50896618c32
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/25cc0096efba83b4e0e6fa50f03e9543b41e9d3d
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/420315413b29635de1d4ea4142e410e6465260f3
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/79fb5bcc50996964e076dffbdc24b7d2c06bd957
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7ced87834f3a58761d4bbcabf8326478548e6a54
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b1986595cf827c38ff929e22fbc9ca8f76379306
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ee33e424d4932c70f103b94a46b685923f236f65

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