Networking Fixes and Security Patches

Transcript

Good morning, it's January 23rd, 2026. I'm your host with Linux Kernel Daily.

Today brings significant activity with 16 commits focused primarily on stability and security fixes.

The headline change comes from Linus Torvalds merging networking fixes from Jakub Kicinski's net-6.19-rc7 tag. This substantial merge addresses 96 separate issues, including critical fixes for USB network device crashes after resume, corrections to driver seqlock usage, and security patches for the rxrpc protocol that prevent queue corruption. The merge also includes two reverts of problematic patches and addresses a teql scheduler vulnerability that could be exploited by non-root users.

Wireless networking received attention through a separate merge fixing authentication and encryption issues across multiple drivers including ath10k, ath12k, and mwifiex. These patches resolve deadlocks during management frame flushing and fix bitrate calculation overflows.

Security took center stage with Cedric Xing's x86 page fault handling fix, addressing improper interrupt disabling that could lead to race conditions. The patch simplifies the approach by unconditionally disabling interrupts before returning to low-level fault handlers, replacing previous incomplete attempts.

Additional fixes include a crypto subsystem patch rejecting malformed authentication data, a LED class race condition fix preventing null pointer dereferences on ThinkPads, and multiple driver-specific corrections for Marvell OcteonTX2 and Hinic3 network adapters.

What's next: Expect continued rc7 stabilization work as the 6.19 release cycle nears completion. Security-focused testing will likely increase given today's interrupt handling and networking protocol fixes.

That's your Linux kernel update for January 23rd. Stay secure.