CVE-2026-53234 — net: ibm: emac: Fix use-after-free during device removal

Affected: Linux

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

net: ibm: emac: Fix use-after-free during device removal

The driver was using devm_register_netdev() which causes unregister_netdev() to be deferred until the devres cleanup phase, which runs after emac_remove() returns. This creates a use-after-free window where:

1. emac_remove() is called, which tears down hardware (cancels work, detaches modules, unregisters from MAL) 2. emac_remove() returns 3. devres cleanup runs and finally calls unregister_netdev()

During step 3, the network stack might still process packets, triggering emac_irq(), emac_poll(), or other handlers that access now-freed hardware resources (dev->emacp, dev->mal, etc.).

Fix this by replacing devm_register_netdev() with manual register_netdev() and calling unregister_netdev() at the beginning of emac_remove(), before any hardware teardown. This ensures the network device is fully stopped and unregistered before hardware resources are released.

The change is safe because: - dev->ndev is assigned very early in probe (before any error paths that could bypass emac_remove) - platform_set_drvdata() is only called after successful registration, so emac_remove() only runs for fully registered devices - unregister_netdev() is idempotent and safe to call on any registered device

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CVE-2026-53234 — net: ibm: emac: Fix use-after-free during device removal