linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-38235: HID: appletb-kbd: fix "appletb_backlight" backlight device reference counting

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Message-ID: <2025070619-CVE-2025-38235-0098@gregkh>
Date: Sun,  6 Jul 2025 11:11:19 +0200
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-38235: HID: appletb-kbd: fix "appletb_backlight" backlight device reference counting

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>

Description
===========

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

HID: appletb-kbd: fix "appletb_backlight" backlight device reference counting

During appletb_kbd_probe, probe attempts to get the backlight device
by name. When this happens backlight_device_get_by_name looks for a
device in the backlight class which has name "appletb_backlight" and
upon finding a match it increments the reference count for the device
and returns it to the caller. However this reference is never released
leading to a reference leak.

Fix this by decrementing the backlight device reference count on removal
via put_device and on probe failure.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-38235 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 6.15 with commit 93a0fc48948107e0cc34e1de22c3cb363a8f2783 and fixed in 6.15.5 with commit 751d5437112a3f387de4ef6d2d1c131068ff7627
	Issue introduced in 6.15 with commit 93a0fc48948107e0cc34e1de22c3cb363a8f2783 and fixed in 6.16-rc4 with commit 4540e41e753a7d69ecd3f5bad51fe620205c3a18

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2025-38235
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	drivers/hid/hid-appletb-kbd.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/751d5437112a3f387de4ef6d2d1c131068ff7627
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4540e41e753a7d69ecd3f5bad51fe620205c3a18