CVE-2026-63985

About vulnerability

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

ethtool: eeprom: add more safeties to EEPROM Netlink fallback

The Netlink fallback path for reading module EEPROM (fallback_set_params()) validates that offset < eeprom_len, but does not check that offset + length stays within eeprom_len. The ioctl equivalent (ethtool_get_any_eeprom() in ioctl.c) has always enforced both bounds:

if (eeprom.offset + eeprom.len > total_len) return -EINVAL;

This could lead to surprises in both drivers and device FW. Add the missing offset + length validation to fallback_set_params(), mirroring the ioctl.

Similarly - ethtool core in general, and ethtool_get_any_eeprom() in particular tries to zero-init all buffers passed to the drivers to avoid any extra work of zeroing things out. eeprom_fallback() uses a plain kmalloc(), change it to zalloc.

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.