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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2021-46916 json

ixgbe: Fix NULL pointer dereference in ethtool loopback test

published 2024-02-27 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-33564

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 9%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

ixgbe: Fix NULL pointer dereference in ethtool loopback test

The ixgbe driver currently generates a NULL pointer dereference when performing the ethtool loopback test. This is due to the fact that there isn't a q_vector associated with the test ring when it is setup as interrupts are not normally added to the test rings.

To address this I have added code that will check for a q_vector before returning a napi_id value. If a q_vector is not present it will return a value of 0.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.11.16, 5.12
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.14.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-46916

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-46916 updated cvss 4.4

kernel: NULL pointer dereference in ethtool loopback test

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 9% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.