Medium [CVE-2026-64125] keep RBUF EEE/PM disabled
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-64125 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat package: kernel-rt.
Android app · Google Play
Monitor future Red Hat Linux CVEs from your phone.
Choose a whole vendor or a precise platform, then receive matching security advisories by phone notification, email, or both. Coverage follows 32 official vendor sources and 160+ reviewed platform categories.
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: bcmgenet: keep RBUF EEE/PM disabled Setting RBUF_EEE_EN | RBUF_PM_EN in RBUF_ENERGY_CTRL breaks the RX path on GENET hardware once MAC EEE becomes active. RX traffic stops flowing while the link stays up and the usual descriptor/RX error counters remain quiet.
In that state the MAC still accepts frames (rbuf_ovflow_cnt keeps climbing) but RBUF no longer forwards them to DMA, so rx_packets is no longer incremented at the netdev level. On some boards the corruption ends up as a paging fault in skb_release_data via bcmgenet_rx_poll on an LPI exit.
Reproduced on Pi 4B (BCM2711 + BCM54213PE) and confirmed by Florian Fainelli on an internal Broadcom 4908-family board with the same crash signature. RBUF_PM_EN is not publicly documented.
This shows up more often now that phy_support_eee() enables EEE by default, but it also affects older kernels as soon as TX LPI is turned on via ethtool, so it is not specific to recent changes. Always clear RBUF_EEE_EN | RBUF_PM_EN in bcmgenet_eee_enable_set so the bits stay off across resets.
UMAC and TBUF setup is left alone so TX-side EEE keeps working. A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's bcmgenet network driver.
When Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) is active on GENET hardware, a misconfiguration in the receive buffer (RBUF) can cause network traffic to stop flowing.
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 6 days ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 6 days ago·verify at source
Mitigation
The source record does not include mitigation steps. That is not a statement that no fix exists — read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 6 days ago·verify at source
Discussion(0)
No comments yet. Share field notes, upgrade gotchas, or questions — verify against the vendor advisory before acting on community advice.
Sign in to join the discussion.