From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: AL-KERNEL To: kernel-cve@kernelcve.org Subject: [CVE-2026-90112][MODERATE REGULAR] net: qlcnic: validate unified ROM sections before loading [ Upstream Date: Thu, 17 Sep 2026 16:12:23 -0400 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-AL-KERNEL-CVE: CVE-2026-90112 X-AL-KERNEL-Priority: MODERATE REGULAR X-AL-KERNEL-Severity: MODERATE REGULAR X-AL-KERNEL-Base-Severity: MODERATE X-AL-KERNEL-KPANIC: NO X-AL-KERNEL-ActionableScore: 1 X-AL-KERNEL-ActionableScore-Lower: unknown X-AL-KERNEL-Commit: b9efc177703a03312cc2f6e6a4bbd4595e8158a1 List-Id: CVE: CVE-2026-90112 Priority: MODERATE REGULAR AL-KERNEL base severity: MODERATE KPANIC flag: NO Patch: net: qlcnic: validate unified ROM sections before loading [ Upstream Commit: b9efc177703a03312cc2f6e6a4bbd4595e8158a1 Upstream patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=b9efc177703a03312cc2f6e6a4bbd4595e8158a1 Original CVE announcement: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-90112 Analysis date: Thu, 17 Sep 2026 16:12:23 -0400 ActionableScore: 1 ActionableScore lower bound: unknown Actionable bucket: Ordinary Moderate Manual review required: NO Summary: No one-sentence report phrase was found. ====================================================================== ABOUT THIS REPORT ====================================================================== The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-90112 is available here: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-90112 The original announcement does not normally provide a security severity estimate, CVSS assessment, or enough information to determine whether the reported kernel bug represents a practically relevant security issue. This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin. It combines an autonomous classifier with LLM-assisted technical analysis and a separate ActionableScore mechanism. The purpose of this report is to prioritize Linux kernel CVEs before manual review, identify cases that require prompt investigation, and support automatic closure of issues that are unlikely to have meaningful security impact. Published priority for this report: MODERATE REGULAR Manual review required: NO A detailed explanation of the methodology and priority rules is included at the end of this message. ====================================================================== AL-KERNEL CLASSIFICATION RESULT ====================================================================== CVE-2026-90112 MODERATE https://www.kernelcve.org/list/?q=CVE-2026-90112 CHECK WITH IMPACT FROM ORIG NN LOW Maybe valid. Check manually. Hints by AL-KERNEL: The best (paranoid) CVSS is 'AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:H';CWE-190;CWE-125;*CWE-20;Other CVSS 'AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H';BEST CVSS score: '5.1';DESCR 'The qlcnic unified ROM loader can parse malformed firmware metadata with unchecked additions and multiplications, allowing firmware controlled section offsets and sizes to wrap before they are compared with the firmware image size. A crafted or truncated firmware image can make the driver read past the firmware allocation during validation or loading, including fixed size bootloader reads, version tail parsing, or a partial final u64 word read. For the CVSS the PR:H is used because reliable triggering normally requires administrative control over the firmware file or driver loading path on the target system. The issue is not directly network reachable and is not triggered by normal packet traffic. Impact is primarily denial of service via kernel crash or driver failure. For the paranoid score, choose the highest still-defensible interpretation supported by the bug class and patch context, so limited confidentiality impact is retained for the out-of-bounds read but integrity impact is not raised without an overwrite or UAF primitive.';YES REQUIRES MANUAL CHECK; ,and ActionableScore result is Ordinary Moderate (with actual score 1) YES REMOTE NETWORK HARDWARE LINUS DECREASED_TO_MODERATE_REGULAR_FROM_MODERATE7_BASED_ON_GUESSCVSS_AND_CIANNH NO NO checked ====================================================================== ACTIONABLESCORE ANALYSIS ====================================================================== ActionableScore=1 PrimitiveClass=CLASS_C RealUAF=NO HostAdminRequired=YES NamespaceScopedPrivilege=NO ImportantCandidate=NO ManualReview=RECOMMENDED AutoDowngradeAllowed=YES 1. ActionableScore * Raw conservative score: 1 * Conservative score: 1 * Raw paranoid score: 1 * Paranoid score: 1 * Final recommended bucket: **Ordinary Moderate**:: No floor or cap changed the score. 2. Signal breakdown Positive signals: * +1 Weak corruption or invalid memory access candidate. The parser can form wrapped section bounds and then read from firmware-controlled offsets, resulting in OOB reads from the firmware allocation. * +1 Reliable crash or strong DoS concern. A truncated or malformed firmware image can make the driver read beyond the allocated firmware buffer during validation or loading. * +1 Memory layout invariant restoration. The patch restores consistency between firmware image size, section offsets, descriptor sizes, fixed bootloader load length, version tail length, and partial final word handling. Negative signals: * -2 Host-admin-equivalent requirement. Reliable triggering requires control over the firmware image or driver firmware loading path, which is normally host administrative control. Non-awarded signals: * RealUAF not awarded. No stale lifetime object or post-free reference use is established. * Concrete repeated release/refcount not awarded. No repeated put, release, free, or refcount mutation is present. * Controlled reclaim not demonstrated. * Arbitrary or directed kernel write not demonstrated. * Confidentiality bonus not awarded. The OOB read is internal to kernel parsing and no read-back or disclosure path is established. * Integrity bonus not awarded. No overwrite, state corruption primitive, or unauthorized modification is established. * Remote reachability not awarded. The issue is in firmware file parsing, not packet processing. * Firmware-mediated external influence not awarded. The supplied evidence points to a locally supplied firmware file rather than attacker-controlled device traffic. * ImportantCandidate not set because the established primitive is OOB read / DoS only with host-admin triggering and no stronger exploitation leverage. 3. Reachability analysis The practical trigger is a crafted or truncated qlcnic firmware image loaded by the driver. The attacker would normally need administrative control over the firmware file path or over the driver loading and device management workflow. No supplied evidence shows that an ordinary local user can replace the firmware image or cause the complete vulnerable loading sequence below host-admin privilege. The complete trigger is not namespace-scoped. Network namespaces or delegated network capabilities are not shown to provide control over the firmware image or qlcnic firmware loading path. There is no direct packet-based network trigger. The qlcnic hardware and driver must be present, but the issue is not scored as rare hardware-only because the stronger reducing factor is the required administrative control over firmware loading. No race is involved. No special timing penalty is applied. 4. Primitive and severity interpretation The exact primitive is malformed firmware metadata causing integer wraparound in bounds calculations and OOB reads from the firmware allocation. This is not an active structured UAF, not fixed stale storage, and not a cleanup/destructor lifetime bug. There is no concrete repeated release/refcount operation. PrimitiveClass is CLASS_C because the demonstrated behavior is invalid read / crash / driver failure without an independently useful corruption primitive. The demonstrated consequence is denial of service through kernel fault or driver failure during firmware validation or loading. A limited confidentiality concern may be used in CVSS if one wants a paranoid OOB-read interpretation, but ActionableScore does not award a confidentiality signal without a disclosure path. ImportantCandidate is NO because there is no UAF, no write primitive, no controlled reclaim, no authorization bypass, no shared-page ownership violation, and no demonstrated LPE path. AutoDowngradeAllowed is YES because the established issue is host-admin-triggered OOB read / DoS without unresolved Important-grade exploitation leverage. Likely operational severity is ordinary Moderate or Low-like for kernel-security triage, despite a CVSS-style score around 5.1 when counting C:L and A:H. 5. One-sentence report phrase The qlcnic unified ROM loader can mis-validate malformed firmware section metadata and read beyond the firmware allocation, causing a local host-admin-triggered kernel crash or driver failure without evidence of write corruption or privilege escalation. 6. Manual review recommendation MANUAL CHECK RECOMMENDED Reason: this is a real kernel driver firmware parser OOB-read bug with integer wraparound, but current evidence supports host-admin-triggered DoS only and does not establish UAF, write corruption, disclosure, or LPE. 7. Call-site confidence Call-site confidence: medium ====================================================================== UPSTREAM PATCH SUMMARY ====================================================================== Patch: net: qlcnic: validate unified ROM sections before loading [ Upstream Commit: b9efc177703a03312cc2f6e6a4bbd4595e8158a1 Upstream URL: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=b9efc177703a03312cc2f6e6a4bbd4595e8158a1 Diff excerpt: Not included in this email. See the upstream URL for the full patch. Full patch: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/?id=b9efc177703a03312cc2f6e6a4bbd4595e8158a1 ====================================================================== DETAILED REPORT METHODOLOGY ====================================================================== The original Linux kernel CVE announcement for CVE-2026-90112 can be found here: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/?q=CVE-2026-90112 The original CVE announcement normally does not include a security-level estimate. In particular, it may not contain a CVSS assessment, an impact level, or enough information to determine whether the reported bug is a practically relevant security issue. One purpose of this parallel CVE list is to provide that missing technical and prioritization information. The original goal of the AL-KERNEL project was to prioritize Linux kernel CVE analysis automatically before manual review. The system can also help identify non-security issues that may be suitable for automatic closure. This report was generated by AL-KERNEL, an AI-assisted Linux kernel vulnerability analysis system developed by Alexander Larkin. The first analysis stage combines an autonomous classifier with additional LLM-based analysis. The autonomous classifier runs locally on a CPU and is based on a backpropagation neural network. Together, these mechanisms produce a technical vulnerability description, identify likely weakness types, estimate CVSS severity, and provide input for ActionableScore. Two CVSS estimates are retained because incomplete kernel vulnerability information often permits more than one defensible interpretation: Conservative CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H The Best / paranoid CVSS vector: AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:H The Best / paranoid CVSS score: 5.1 The conservative vector represents a lower-impact interpretation. The Best/paranoid vector intentionally represents a plausible upper-bound interpretation and should not automatically be treated as demonstrated real-world impact. CVSS may also need to be adjusted for a particular Linux deployment, because actual reachability, privileges, enabled kernel configuration, hardware, namespaces, exposed device nodes, and other environmental conditions can differ significantly between systems. A separate ActionableScore mechanism evaluates practical remediation urgency. Its analysis may include reachability, attack prerequisites, subsystem exposure, memory-corruption characteristics, denial-of-service reliability, and possible confidentiality, integrity, or privilege-escalation impact. Conservative ActionableScore: unknown Paranoid ActionableScore: 1 The final base severity is taken directly from the second tab-separated field of the AL-KERNEL classification result. ActionableScore does not replace or independently override that final AL-KERNEL decision, and if ActionableScore adjusted impact level of ALKERNEL, then you would see self-readable flags above like INCREASED_TO_HIGH_BASED_ON_ACTIONABLESCOREHIGHEREQTHAN7. For an AL-KERNEL result of MODERATE, this report uses the following additional presentation split: ActionableScore below 5 -> MODERATE REGULAR ActionableScore 5 or more -> MODERATE 7.0 The distinction between MODERATE REGULAR and MODERATE 7.0 makes it possible to identify Moderate issues that should receive manual analysis and fixes before lower-priority MODERATE REGULAR issues. In many cases, MODERATE REGULAR fixes may wait for a later rebase or routine update. There is one override in which MODERATE REGULAR becomes MODERATE 7.0 even when the ActionableScore is below 5. When the AL-KERNEL result contains the KPANIC flag, a MODERATE result is always presented as MODERATE 7.0. The KPANIC flag selected with few regexps without usage of AI at all, so it helps to detect cases when Kernel Crash happens and similar (to filter False-Negative results from the LLM usage). KPANIC indicates that a reliable kernel crash, kernel panic, or similarly serious kernel availability impact was identified by the classification workflow. AL-KERNEL base severity for this report: MODERATE KPANIC detected for this report: NO Published priority for this report (same as in Subject): MODERATE REGULAR These results are intended to support engineering triage. They are machine-generated estimates, and cases marked for manual review should be validated by a human security engineer before final disposition. For more info read docs linked from here: https://kernelcve.org/ (and you can submit you own patch there to generate such a report for non-existant CVE-id yet). Note that in many cases this AI tool selects higher severity, than real is (means you can expect Importants instead of Moderate 7.0 or Moderates 7.0 instead of regular Moderates). If you see such cases, please use reply email interface to add additional manual analyses info to this particular CVE. And please, please, let me know when you see Lows instead of Importants or Important instead of Low (because particular for such cases I need to tune this AI tool to make it better for this one and next similar). My contact email for such notifications is alexanjelausa@gmail.com (and both send reply to CVE record itself too and see "reply" button below for howto reply).