CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-23161 — Linux Linux Kernel security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.5

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: PCI: vmd: Make vmd_dev::cfg_lock a raw_spinlock_t type The access to the PCI config space via pci_ops::read and pci_ops::write is a low-level hardware access. The functions can be accessed with disabled interrupts even on PREEMPT_RT. The pci_lock is a raw_spinlock_t for this purpose. A spinlock_t becomes a sleeping lock on PREEMPT_RT, so it cannot be acquired with disabled interrupts. The vmd_dev::cfg_lock is accessed in the same context as the pci_lock. Make vmd_dev::cfg_lock a raw_spinlock_t type so it can be used with interrupts disabled. This was reported as: BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/locking/spinlock_rt.c:48 Call Trace: rt_spin_lock+0x4e/0x130 vmd_pci_read+0x8d/0x100 [vmd] pci_user_read_config_byte+0x6f/0xe0 pci_read_config+0xfe/0x290 sysfs_kf_bin_read+0x68/0x90 [bigeasy: reword commit message] Tested-off-by: Luis Claudio R. Goncalves <lgoncalv@redhat.com> [kwilczynski: commit log] [bhelgaas: add back report info from https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20241218115951.83062-1-ryotkkr98@gmail.com/]

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.5 (3.1)
Published
2025-05-01
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
linux/kernel
Weaknesses
CWE-667

Affected products

  • linux / linux_kernel
  • debian / debian_linux / 11.0

Showing 2 representative product identities from 7 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Race condition, TOCTOU, and lifecycle synchronization

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Map concurrent actors, shared state, lock boundaries, signals, callbacks, retries, and check-then-use sequences in the affected path.
  • Determine whether untrusted users can influence timing, object names, filesystem state, or repeated state transitions.
  • Identify clustered and multi-process behavior that repository-local tests may not represent.

Remediate safely

  • Make the sensitive state transition atomic or protect it with a consistently ordered synchronization primitive.
  • Perform authorization and invariant checks on the same authoritative object and transaction used for the operation.
  • Use unique private resources, safe ownership transfer, and idempotent operations; add deterministic concurrency regression tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.