CVE-2026-43468

About vulnerability

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net/mlx5: Fix deadlock between devlink lock and esw->wq

esw->work_queue executes esw_functions_changed_event_handler -> esw_vfs_changed_event_handler and acquires the devlink lock.

.eswitch_mode_set (acquires devlink lock in devlink_nl_pre_doit) -> mlx5_devlink_eswitch_mode_set -> mlx5_eswitch_disable_locked -> mlx5_eswitch_event_handler_unregister -> flush_workqueue deadlocks when esw_vfs_changed_event_handler executes.

Fix that by no longer flushing the work to avoid the deadlock, and using a generation counter to keep track of work relevance. This avoids an old handler manipulating an esw that has undergone one or more mode changes:

• the counter is incremented in mlx5_eswitch_event_handler_unregister.
• the counter is read and passed to the ephemeral mlx5_host_work struct.
• the work handler takes the devlink lock and bails out if the current generation is different than the one it was scheduled to operate on.
• mlx5_eswitch_cleanup does the final draining before destroying the wq.

No longer flushing the workqueue has the side effect of maybe no longer cancelling pending vport_change_handler work items, but that’s ok since those are disabled elsewhere:

• mlx5_eswitch_disable_locked disables the vport eq notifier.
• mlx5_esw_vport_disable disarms the HW EQ notification and marks vport->enabled under state_lock to false to prevent pending vport handler from doing anything.
• mlx5_eswitch_cleanup destroys the workqueue and makes sure all events are disabled/finished.

Affected product:

AlmaLinux 9.2 ESU , CentOS 8.4 ELS , CentOS 8.5 ELS , CentOS Stream 8 ELS , TuxCare 9.6 ESU

Affected packages:

kernel @ 4.18.0 (+4 more)

Live-patch status from KernelCare for each operating system.