In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: bonding: fix NULL pointer dereference in bond_do_ioctl() In bond_do_ioctl(), slave_dev is obtained via __dev_get_by_name() which can return NULL if the requested interface name does not exist. However, the subsequent slave_dbg() call is placed before the NULL check: slave_dev = __dev_get_by_name(net, ifr->ifr_slave); slave_dbg(bond_dev, slave_dev, "slave_dev=%p:\n", slave_dev); //here if (!slave_dev)