Bug 2376090 (CVE-2025-38149)

Summary: CVE-2025-38149 kernel: net: phy: clear phydev->devlink when the link is deleted
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
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Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
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OS: Linux   
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-07-03 09:04:34 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: phy: clear phydev->devlink when the link is deleted

There is a potential crash issue when disabling and re-enabling the
network port. When disabling the network port, phy_detach() calls
device_link_del() to remove the device link, but it does not clear
phydev->devlink, so phydev->devlink is not a NULL pointer. Then the
network port is re-enabled, but if phy_attach_direct() fails before
calling device_link_add(), the code jumps to the "error" label and
calls phy_detach(). Since phydev->devlink retains the old value from
the previous attach/detach cycle, device_link_del() uses the old value,
which accesses a NULL pointer and causes a crash. The simplified crash
log is as follows.

[   24.702421] Call trace:
[   24.704856]  device_link_put_kref+0x20/0x120
[   24.709124]  device_link_del+0x30/0x48
[   24.712864]  phy_detach+0x24/0x168
[   24.716261]  phy_attach_direct+0x168/0x3a4
[   24.720352]  phylink_fwnode_phy_connect+0xc8/0x14c
[   24.725140]  phylink_of_phy_connect+0x1c/0x34

Therefore, phydev->devlink needs to be cleared when the device link is
deleted.

Comment 1 Avinash Hanwate 2025-07-03 14:47:06 UTC
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2025070336-CVE-2025-38149-0dad@gregkh/T