CVE-2026-74653: serial: 8250_of: clear stuck empty-FIFO RX-timeout on LPC32xx

CVE-2026-74653: serial: 8250_of: clear stuck empty-FIFO RX-timeout on LPC32xx

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@kernel.org>

Description
===========

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

serial: 8250_of: clear stuck empty-FIFO RX-timeout on LPC32xx

The NXP LPC32xx UART (PORT_LPC3220) can latch an RX character-timeout
interrupt while the RX FIFO is empty: IIR reports UART_IIR_RX_TIMEOUT
(0x0c) but LSR.DR is clear. A character timeout is only cleared by
reading RHR, but serial8250_rx_chars() reads RHR only when LSR.DR is
set, so nothing ever clears the condition. The interrupt is
level-triggered and re-fires immediately, so on a single-core ARM926
the resulting interrupt storm livelocks the CPU.

It is reproducible when userspace repeatedly opens the front-panel port
(ttyS1): serial8250_do_set_termios() re-enables interrupts on unlock and
the handler then spins forever with iir=0xcc lsr=0x60 ier=0x05, tripping
the soft-lockup detector in serial8250_handle_irq_locked().

LPC32xx has no dedicated 8250 glue driver, it's driven by the generic
8250_of. Add a hardware specific handle_irq for PORT_LPC3220, wired up
in of_platform_serial_setup() the same way fsl8250_handle_irq is
installed. The handler follows dw8250_handle_irq(): on an RX timeout
with an empty FIFO (LSR.DR and LSR.BI clear) it does one throwaway RHR
read to clear the condition, then calls serial8250_handle_irq_locked().
No real received data is ever discarded, and it is a no-op on healthy
UARTs which never report a timeout with DR clear.

This is the same class of bug already worked around in other 8250 drivers;
see commit 424d79183af0 ("serial: 8250_dw: Avoid "too much work" from bogus rx timeout interrupt")
which reports the identical iir=0xcc/lsr=0x60. See also
UART_RX_TIMEOUT_QUIRK in 8250_omap, and the note in 8250_bcm7271.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2026-74653 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Fixed in 6.18.45 with commit 3ce24bc4d115336218e59b7e286fd3a79f4fc4c6
	Fixed in 7.1.9 with commit 7795e8abedc86438cae0454602cbf9038b94bf38
	Fixed in 7.2 with commit 1423415471274abda87024967d7fe2206ceee0ea

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2026-74653
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_of.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3ce24bc4d115336218e59b7e286fd3a79f4fc4c6
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7795e8abedc86438cae0454602cbf9038b94bf38
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1423415471274abda87024967d7fe2206ceee0ea