net: core: prevent NULL deref in generic_hwtstamp_ioctl_lower()

CVE-2025-40255

What is CVE-2025-40255?

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

net: core: prevent NULL deref in generic_hwtstamp_ioctl_lower()

The ethtool tsconfig Netlink path can trigger a null pointer dereference. A call chain such as:

tsconfig_prepare_data() -> dev_get_hwtstamp_phylib() -> vlan_hwtstamp_get() -> generic_hwtstamp_get_lower() -> generic_hwtstamp_ioctl_lower()

results in generic_hwtstamp_ioctl_lower() being called with kernel_cfg->ifr as NULL.

The generic_hwtstamp_ioctl_lower() function does not expect a NULL ifr and dereferences it, leading to a system crash.

Fix this by adding a NULL check for kernel_cfg->ifr in generic_hwtstamp_ioctl_lower(). If ifr is NULL, return -EINVAL.

References