CVE-2026-23167 — nfc: nci: Fix race between rfkill and nci_unregister_device().

Affected: Linux

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

nfc: nci: Fix race between rfkill and nci_unregister_device().

syzbot reported the splat below [0] without a repro.

It indicates that struct nci_dev.cmd_wq had been destroyed before nci_close_device() was called via rfkill.

nci_dev.cmd_wq is only destroyed in nci_unregister_device(), which (I think) was called from virtual_ncidev_close() when syzbot close()d an fd of virtual_ncidev.

The problem is that nci_unregister_device() destroys nci_dev.cmd_wq first and then calls nfc_unregister_device(), which removes the device from rfkill by rfkill_unregister().

So, the device is still visible via rfkill even after nci_dev.cmd_wq is destroyed.

Let's unregister the device from rfkill first in nci_unregister_device().

Note that we cannot call nfc_unregister_device() before nci_close_device() because

1) nfc_unregister_device() calls device_del() which frees all memory allocated by devm_kzalloc() and linked to ndev->conn_info_list

2) nci_rx_work() could try to queue nci_conn_info to ndev->conn_info_list which could be leaked

Thus, nfc_unregister_device() is split into two functions so we can remove rfkill interfaces only before nci_close_device().

[0]: DEBUG_LOCKS_WARN_ON(1) WARNING: kernel/locking/lockdep.c:238 at hlock_class kernel/locking/lockdep.c:238 [inline], CPU#0: syz.0.8675/6349 WARNING: kernel/locking/lockdep.c:238 at check_wait_context kernel/locking/lockdep.c:4854 [inline], CPU…

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CVE-2026-23167 — nfc: nci: Fix race between rfkill and nci_unregister_device().