mwifiex: bring down link before deleting interface

published 2024-05-21 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-34354

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 7%
public exploits: 0; none known

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

We can deadlock when rmmod'ing the driver or going through firmware reset, because the cfg80211_unregister_wdev() has to bring down the link for us, ... which then grab the same wiphy lock.

nl80211_del_interface() already handles a very similar case, with a nice description:

/* * We hold RTNL, so this is safe, without RTNL opencount cannot * reach 0, and thus the rdev cannot be deleted. * * We need to do it for the dev_close(), since that will call * the netdev notifiers, and we need to acquire the mutex there * but don't know if we get there from here or from some other * place (e.g. "ip link set ... down"). */ mutex_unlock(&rdev->wiphy.mtx); ...

Do similarly for mwifiex teardown, by ensuring we bring the link down first.

Sample deadlock trace:

[ 247.103516] INFO: task rmmod:2119 blocked for more than 123 seconds. [ 247.110630] Not tainted 5.12.4 #5 [ 247.115796] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message. [ 247.124557] task:rmmod state:D stack: 0 pid: 2119 ppid: 2114 flags:0x00400208 [ 247.133905] Call trace: [ 247.136644] __switch_to+0x130/0x170 [ 247.140643] __schedule+0x714/0xa0c [ 247.144548] schedule_preempt_disabled+0x88/0xf4 [ 247.149714] __mutex_lock_common+0x43c/0x750 [ 247.154496] mutex_lock_nested+0x5c/0x68 [ 247.158884] cfg80211_netdev_notifier_call+0x280/0x4e0 [cfg80211] [ 247.165769] raw_notifier_call_chain+0x4c/0x78 [ 247.170742] call_netdevice_notifiers_info+0x68/0xa4 [ 247.176305] __dev_close_many+0x7c/0x138 [ 247.180693] dev_close_many+0x7c/0x10c [ 247.184893] unregister_netdevice_many+0xfc/0x654 [ 247.190158] unregister_netdevice_queue+0xb4/0xe0 [ 247.195424] _cfg80211_unregister_wdev+0xa4/0x204 [cfg80211] [ 247.201816] cfg80211_unregister_wdev+0x20/0x2c [cfg80211] [ 247.208016] mwifiex_del_virtual_intf+0xc8/0x188 [mwifiex] [ 247.214174] mwifiex_uninit_sw+0x158/0x1b0 [mwifiex] [ 247.219747] mwifiex_remove_card+0x38/0xa0 [mwifiex] [ 247.225316] mwifiex_pcie_remove+0xd0/0xe0 [mwifiex_pcie] [ 247.231451] pci_device_remove+0x50/0xe0 [ 247.235849] device_release_driver_internal+0x110/0x1b0 [ 247.241701] driver_detach+0x5c/0x9c [ 247.245704] bus_remove_driver+0x84/0xb8 [ 247.250095] driver_unregister+0x3c/0x60 [ 247.254486] pci_unregister_driver+0x2c/0x90 [ 247.259267] cleanup_module+0x18/0xcdc [mwifiex_pcie]

Patch / fix

fixed in 1 links 3

Linux Linux 5.12.18, 5.13.3, 5.14

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-2021-47349 updated 2026-11-06 cvss 4.4

kernel: mwifiex: bring down link before deleting interface

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
affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
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
affected: no fix available

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 (2024-09-10)

Exploit prediction

0.18% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 7% 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

CWE-667 Improper Locking

Technology feeds

Linux kernel rss critical rss

References

Sources

CVE List CVE-2021-47349
NVD CVE-2021-47349

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.

Summary