CVEvulnerability
CVE-2025-38537
5.5 MEDIUM
Official page ↗
- Status
- Analyzed
- Published
- 2025-08-16
- Last modified
- 2026-06-17
- Assigner
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
- CVSS 3.1 ([email protected])
- 5.5 MEDIUM — CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net: phy: Don't register LEDs for genphy
If a PHY has no driver, the genphy driver is probed/removed directly in
phy_attach/detach. If the PHY's ofnode has an "leds" subnode, then the
LEDs will be (un)registered when probing/removing the genphy driver.
This could occur if the leds are for a non-generic driver that isn't
loaded for whatever reason. Synchronously removing the PHY device in
phy_detach leads to the following deadlock:
rtnl_lock()
ndo_close()
...
phy_detach()
phy_remove()
phy_leds_unregister()
led_classdev_unregister()
led_trigger_set()
netdev_trigger_deactivate()
unregister_netdevice_notifier()
rtnl_lock()
There is a corresponding deadlock on the open/register side of things
(and that one is reported by lockdep), but it requires a race while this
one is deterministic.
Generic PHYs do not support LEDs anyway, so don't bother registering
them.
Affected configurations
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.4 < 6.6.100)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.7 < 6.12.40)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.13 < 6.15.8)
• linux linux kernel 6.16
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/75e1b2079ef0653a2f7aa69be515d86b7faf1908 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ec158d05eaa91b2809cab65f8068290e3c05ebdd Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f0f2b992d8185a0366be951685e08643aae17d6d Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fd6493533af9e5d73d0d42ff2a8ded978a701dc6 Patch