Intel Ethernet Controller E810 Series firmware: A race condition in E810 firmware lets an authenticated local user

Impact

A race condition in E810 firmware lets an authenticated local user cause denial of service. In a bare-metal multi-tenant cluster 'authenticated local' is the tenant, so this is a tenant able to kill its own node's NIC — and on shared-NIC designs, potentially the NIC serving other functions on the same host.

Who can reach it

Authenticated local access to the host. In a bare-metal GPU rental model, that is the customer.

What to do

Flash E810 firmware to 1.7.2.4 or later; cold power cycle. This one is a good argument for reflashing NIC firmware as part of tenant handoff rather than only on a CVE-driven schedule.

References