GHSA-fj9c-r5qw-3639: DesignWare I2C target driver can be wedged into a permanent stuck state by an on-bus master (DoS)
In the Synopsys DesignWare I2C driver (drivers/i2c/i2cdw.c) operating in target/slave mode, the rxfull interrupt handler gates the writerequested() callback on dw->state != CMDSEND, and dw->state is only reset to READY on a STOP interrupt. The STARTDET interrupt, whose handler in i2cdwslavereadclearintrbits() would reset the state on every (re)START, was never added to the enabled interrupt mask in i2cdwslaveregister(), so that recovery path was dead code.
As a result, if the STOP interrupt is lost (bus glitch/reset, or a concurrent master driving STOP) or the bus master issues a legal WRITE-repeated-START-WRITE sequence with the same direction, the driver remains in CMDSEND permanently and never invokes writerequested() again for the life of the target.
An I2C master on the same physical bus can deliberately trigger this, causing the I2C target function to malfunction for all subsequent write transactions and desynchronizing consumer framing state (e.g. MCTP-over-I2C), a recoverable-by-reset denial of service of the target peripheral.
The fix unmasks STARTDET so the state is reset at every bus (re)START. Impact is availability-only over a local board-level bus; no memory corruption results in the in-tree consumer, whose per-byte buffer write is independently bounds-checked.
Affected Software
Remediation
Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.
- Configuration
Unmask START_DET in i2c_dw_slave_register() so the target state is reset at every bus start or repeated start.
Synopsys DesignWare I2C target/slave driver START_DET interrupt in the enabled interrupt mask = enabled