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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2024-53190 json

wifi: rtlwifi: Drastically reduce the attempts to read efuse in case of failures

published 2024-12-27 22 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2024-51862

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 15%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

wifi: rtlwifi: Drastically reduce the attempts to read efuse in case of failures

Syzkaller reported a hung task with uevent_show() on stack trace. That specific issue was addressed by another commit [0], but even with that fix applied (for example, running v6.12-rc5) we face another type of hung task that comes from the same reproducer [1]. By investigating that, we could narrow it to the following path:

(a) Syzkaller emulates a Realtek USB WiFi adapter using raw-gadget and dummy_hcd infrastructure.

(b) During the probe of rtl8192cu, the driver ends-up performing an efuse read procedure (which is related to EEPROM load IIUC), and here lies the issue: the function read_efuse() calls read_efuse_byte() many times, as loop iterations depending on the efuse size (in our example, 512 in total).

This procedure for reading efuse bytes relies in a loop that performs an I/O read up to *10k* times in case of failures. We measured the time of the loop inside read_efuse_byte() alone, and in this reproducer (which involves the dummy_hcd emulation layer), it takes 15 seconds each. As a consequence, we have the driver stuck in its probe routine for big time, exposing a stack trace like below if we attempt to reboot the system, for example:

task:kworker/0:3 state:D stack:0 pid:662 tgid:662 ppid:2 flags:0x00004000 Workqueue: usb_hub_wq hub_event Call Trace: __schedule+0xe22/0xeb6 schedule_timeout+0xe7/0x132 __wait_for_common+0xb5/0x12e usb_start_wait_urb+0xc5/0x1ef ? usb_alloc_urb+0x95/0xa4 usb_control_msg+0xff/0x184 _usbctrl_vendorreq_sync+0xa0/0x161 _usb_read_sync+0xb3/0xc5 read_efuse_byte+0x13c/0x146 read_efuse+0x351/0x5f0 efuse_read_all_map+0x42/0x52 rtl_efuse_shadow_map_update+0x60/0xef rtl_get_hwinfo+0x5d/0x1c2 rtl92cu_read_eeprom_info+0x10a/0x8d5 ? rtl92c_read_chip_version+0x14f/0x17e rtl_usb_probe+0x323/0x851 usb_probe_interface+0x278/0x34b really_probe+0x202/0x4a4 __driver_probe_device+0x166/0x1b2 driver_probe_device+0x2f/0xd8 [...]

We propose hereby to drastically reduce the attempts of doing the I/O reads in case of failures, restricted to USB devices (given that they're inherently slower than PCIe ones). By retrying up to 10 times (instead of 10000), we got reponsiveness in the reproducer, while seems reasonable to believe that there's no sane USB device implementation in the field requiring this amount of retries at every I/O read in order to properly work. Based on that assumption, it'd be good to have it backported to stable but maybe not since driver implementation (the 10k number comes from day 0), perhaps up to 6.x series makes sense.

[0] Commit 15fffc6a5624 ("driver core: Fix uevent_show() vs driver detach race")

[1] A note about that: this syzkaller report presents multiple reproducers that differs by the type of emulated USB device. For this specific case, check the entry from 2024/08/08 06:23 in the list of crashes; the C repro is available at https://syzkaller.appspot.com/text?tag=ReproC&x=1521fc83980000.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.120, 6.6.64, 6.11.11, 6.12.2, 6.13
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.123-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.12.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2024-53190

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-58.60
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1027.29
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1028.30
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1023.27
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1024.24
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1027.32
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1010.12
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1028.32

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2024-53190

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel RHEL 9 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6
  • rv RHEL 9 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6
  • perf RHEL 9 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6
  • rtla RHEL 9 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6
  • libperf RHEL 9 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6
  • kernel-rt RHEL 9 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6
  • kernel-64k RHEL 9 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6
  • kernel-core RHEL 9 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6

red hat advisories RHSA-2025:6966

  • kernel-rt Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-25.1
  • kernel-source-rt Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-25.1
  • kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0-RT_Update_5 Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 1-1.1
  • kernel-source Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-25.1
  • kernel-default Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-25.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-25.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-24.1.21.4
  • kernel-livepatch-MICRO-6-0_Update_5 Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 1-1.2

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:20166-1SUSE-SU-2025:20249-1SUSE-SU-2025:20165-1SUSE-SU-2025:20248-1SUSE-SU-2025:0289-1SUSE-SU-2025:0154-1

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-2024-53190 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: wifi: rtlwifi: Drastically reduce the attempts to read efuse in case of failures

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more
    affected: workaround, no fix available
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 9) rv 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, perf 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, rtla 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, python3-perf 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-devel-matched 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-64k-devel-matched 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, +7 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux BaseOS (v. 9) kernel 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-64k 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-core 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-tools 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-modules 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-64k-core 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, +27 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux CodeReady Linux Builder (v. 9) libperf 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-debuginfo-common-s390x 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-debuginfo-common-aarch64 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-debuginfo-common-ppc64le 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Real Time (v. 9) kernel-rt 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-rt-64k 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-rt-core 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-rt-modules 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-rt-64k-core 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-rt-debug-core 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, +14 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux Real Time for NFV (v. 9) kernel-rt 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-rt-kvm 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-rt-core 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-rt-modules 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-rt-debug-kvm 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, kernel-rt-debug-core 5.14.0-570.12.1.el9_6, +6 more
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2025:6966
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    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
13 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.24% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 15% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

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

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.