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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2024-42282 json

net: mediatek: Fix potential NULL pointer dereference in dummy net_device handling

published 2024-08-17 2 y ago modified 2026-10-03 36 d ago also EUVD-2024-39505

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 12%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

net: mediatek: Fix potential NULL pointer dereference in dummy net_device handling

Move the freeing of the dummy net_device from mtk_free_dev() to mtk_remove().

Previously, if alloc_netdev_dummy() failed in mtk_probe(), eth->dummy_dev would be NULL. The error path would then call mtk_free_dev(), which in turn called free_netdev() assuming dummy_dev was allocated (but it was not), potentially causing a NULL pointer dereference.

By moving free_netdev() to mtk_remove(), we ensure it's only called when mtk_probe() has succeeded and dummy_dev is fully allocated. This addresses a potential NULL pointer dereference detected by Smatch[1].

Patch / fix

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-2024-42282 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: net: mediatek: Fix potential NULL pointer dereference in dummy net_device handling

  • 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

0.22% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 12% 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.