CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-38720 — Linux Linux Kernel security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.5

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: hibmcge: fix rtnl deadlock issue Currently, the hibmcge netdev acquires the rtnl_lock in pci_error_handlers.reset_prepare() and releases it in pci_error_handlers.reset_done(). However, in the PCI framework: pci_reset_bus - __pci_reset_slot - pci_slot_save_and_disable_locked - pci_dev_save_and_disable - err_handler->reset_prepare(dev); In pci_slot_save_and_disable_locked(): list_for_each_entry(dev, &slot->bus->devices, bus_list) { if (!dev->slot || dev->slot!= slot) continue; pci_dev_save_and_disable(dev); if (dev->subordinate) pci_bus_save_and_disable_locked(dev->subordinate); } This will iterate through all devices under the current bus and execute err_handler->reset_prepare(), causing two devices of the hibmcge driver to sequentially request the rtnl_lock, leading to a deadlock. Since the driver now executes netif_device_detach() before the reset process, it will not concurrently with other netdev APIs, so there is no need to hold the rtnl_lock now. Therefore, this patch removes the rtnl_lock during the reset process and adjusts the position of HBG_NIC_STATE_RESETTING to ensure that multiple resets are not…

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.5 (3.1)
Published
2025-09-04
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
linux/kernel
Weaknesses
CWE-667

Affected products

  • linux / linux_kernel
  • linux / linux_kernel / 6.17

Showing 2 representative product identities from 3 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Race condition, TOCTOU, and lifecycle synchronization

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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

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