[PATCH 5.15 098/206] usbnet: limit max_mtu based on devices hard_mtu

Greg Kroah-Hartman
2026-02-04T14:58:46Z

From: Laurent Vivier <lvivier@redhat.com>

[ Upstream commit c7159e960f1472a5493ac99aff0086ab1d683594 ]

The usbnet driver initializes net->max_mtu to ETH_MAX_MTU before calling
the device's bind() callback. When the bind() callback sets
dev->hard_mtu based the device's actual capability (from CDC Ethernet's
wMaxSegmentSize descriptor), max_mtu is never updated to reflect this
hardware limitation).

This allows userspace (DHCP or IPv6 RA) to configure MTU larger than the
device can handle, leading to silent packet drops when the backend sends
packet exceeding the device's buffer size.

Fix this by limiting net->max_mtu to the device's hard_mtu after the
bind callback returns.

See https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/3268 and
https://bugs.passt.top/attachment.cgi?bugid=189

Fixes: f77f0aee4da4 ("net: use core MTU range checking in USB NIC drivers")
Signed-off-by: Laurent Vivier <lvivier@redhat.com>
Link: https://bugs.passt.top/show_bug.cgi?id=189
Reviewed-by: Stefano Brivio <sbrivio@redhat.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260119075518.2774373-1-lvivier@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
---
drivers/net/usb/usbnet.c | 9 ++++++---
1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/net/usb/usbnet.c b/drivers/net/usb/usbnet.c
index aceec2381e802..c4767a729be10 100644
--- a/drivers/net/usb/usbnet.c
+++ b/drivers/net/usb/usbnet.c
@@ -1797,9 +1797,12 @@ usbnet_probe (struct usb_interface *udev, const struct usb_device_id *prod)
if ((dev->driver_info->flags & FLAG_NOARP) != 0)
net->flags |= IFF_NOARP;

- /* maybe the remote can't receive an Ethernet MTU */
- if (net->mtu > (dev->hard_mtu - net->hard_header_len))
- net->mtu = dev->hard_mtu - net->hard_header_len;
+ if (net->max_mtu > (dev->hard_mtu - net->hard_header_len))
+ net->max_mtu = dev->hard_mtu - net->hard_header_len;
+
+ if (net->mtu > net->max_mtu)
+ net->mtu = net->max_mtu;
+
} else if (!info->in || !info->out)
status = usbnet_get_endpoints (dev, udev);
else {
--
2.51.0