linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-38551: virtio-net: fix recursived rtnl

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <2025081628-CVE-2025-38551-901c@gregkh>
Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2025 13:34:28 +0200
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-38551: virtio-net: fix recursived rtnl_lock() during probe()

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

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

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

virtio-net: fix recursived rtnl_lock() during probe()

The deadlock appears in a stack trace like:

  virtnet_probe()
    rtnl_lock()
    virtio_config_changed_work()
      netdev_notify_peers()
        rtnl_lock()

It happens if the VMM sends a VIRTIO_NET_S_ANNOUNCE request while the
virtio-net driver is still probing.

The config_work in probe() will get scheduled until virtnet_open() enables
the config change notification via virtio_config_driver_enable().

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-38551 to this issue.


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

	Issue introduced in 6.12 with commit df28de7b00502761eba62490f413c65c9b175ed9 and fixed in 6.12.40 with commit 4e7c46362550b229354aeb52038f414e231b0037
	Issue introduced in 6.12 with commit df28de7b00502761eba62490f413c65c9b175ed9 and fixed in 6.15.8 with commit 3859f137b3c1fa1f0031d54263234566bdcdd7aa
	Issue introduced in 6.12 with commit df28de7b00502761eba62490f413c65c9b175ed9 and fixed in 6.16 with commit be5dcaed694e4255dc02dd0acfe036708c535def
	Issue introduced in 6.11.2 with commit cb06b26bb2e6d2c6a32f65f7bb1b7dcbe033d675

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-2025-38551
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/net/virtio_net.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/4e7c46362550b229354aeb52038f414e231b0037
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3859f137b3c1fa1f0031d54263234566bdcdd7aa
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/be5dcaed694e4255dc02dd0acfe036708c535def