# CVE-2026-68330: net: airoha: Fix DMA direction for NPU mailbox buffer

- Severity: CVSS 7.8 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2026-08-10 · Updated: 2026-08-17

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 6.16

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: airoha: Fix DMA direction for NPU mailbox buffer airoha_npu_send_msg() always maps the mailbox buffer with DMA_TO_DEVICE, but some callers expect the NPU to write response data back into the same buffer: - airoha_npu_wlan_msg_get() (NPU_OP_GET): NPU writes response into the buffer, then the caller reads it via memcpy() - airoha_npu_ppe_stats_setup() (NPU_OP_SET): NPU writes back npu_stats_addr field in the response On non-cache-coherent architectures like EN7581 (Cortex-A53 without hardware cache coherency for NPU DMA), DMA_TO_DEVICE unmap is a no-op — it does not invalidate the CPU cache. If the NPU-written cache line is still present in the CPU cache when the caller reads the buffer, the CPU observes stale data instead of the NPU response. This is a timing-sensitive bug: small mailbox buffers (~24 bytes) typically fit in a single cache line and may survive in the cache until the caller reads them, producing silent data corruption rather than a crash. The bug is more likely to trigger when the caller reads the response immediately after dma_unmap_single() without intervening cache-evicting operations. Fix by using DMA_BIDIRECTIONAL for both map and unmap, which ensures dma_unmap_single() invalidates the CPU cache on non-coherent systems. The mailbox buffers are small so there is no performance concern.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Linux kernel, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
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## Related

- Browse: [Linux kernel](https://cve.now/tech/linux-kernel.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/76fc5604308a109bf5838c2a0a0eb3ac6819f1ea
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4c4d866a64f36718cbcdf20add372a599dd44311
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6f884eb87a79e0c482baef2ad96c96b81d024235

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