The vulnerability in the Linux kernel's ARC EMAC ethernet driver arises because normal RX/TX interrupts are enabled later in arc_emac_open(), but hardware may still present stale or latched interrupt status left by firmware or the bootloader. If the probe unwinds after devm_request_irq() installs the handler, a stale interrupt can reach arc_emac_intr() during teardown, racing with the release of the associated net_device. The fix involves putting the device into a known quiescent state before requesting the IRQ by disabling all EMAC interrupt sources and clearing any pending EMAC interrupt status bits, preventing spurious IRQ delivery from leftover state. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-64587 and has a CVSS 3.1 score of 7.0 (AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H).

Successful exploitation could lead to high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability due to race conditions caused by spurious interrupts during device teardown. This could potentially allow local attackers with low privileges to cause system instability or compromise network device operation. However, exploitation requires local access and high attack complexity.

A patch is available and should be applied by updating to the fixed Linux kernel versions as indicated in the vendor advisories. After updating, a system reboot is required to apply the changes. No additional mitigation actions are specified or required beyond applying the official fix.