linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-68762: net: netpoll: initialize work queue before error checks

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Message-ID: <2026010551-CVE-2025-68762-8b05@gregkh>
Date: Mon,  5 Jan 2026 10:32:58 +0100
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-68762: net: netpoll: initialize work queue before error checks

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

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

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

net: netpoll: initialize work queue before error checks

Prevent a kernel warning when netconsole setup fails on devices with
IFF_DISABLE_NETPOLL flag. The warning (at kernel/workqueue.c:4242 in
__flush_work) occurs because the cleanup path tries to cancel an
uninitialized work queue.

When __netpoll_setup() encounters a device with IFF_DISABLE_NETPOLL,
it fails early and calls skb_pool_flush() for cleanup. This function
calls cancel_work_sync(&np->refill_wq), but refill_wq hasn't been
initialized yet, triggering the warning.

Move INIT_WORK() to the beginning of __netpoll_setup(), ensuring the
work queue is properly initialized before any potential failure points.
This allows the cleanup path to safely cancel the work queue regardless
of where the setup fails.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-68762 to this issue.

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

	Issue introduced in 6.15 with commit 248f6571fd4c51531f7f8f07f186f7ae98a50afc and fixed in 6.17.13 with commit a90d0dc38a10347078cca60e7495ad0648838f18
	Issue introduced in 6.15 with commit 248f6571fd4c51531f7f8f07f186f7ae98a50afc and fixed in 6.18.2 with commit 760bc6ceda8e2c273c0e2018ad2595967c3dd308
	Issue introduced in 6.15 with commit 248f6571fd4c51531f7f8f07f186f7ae98a50afc and fixed in 6.19-rc1 with commit e5235eb6cfe02a51256013a78f7b28779a7740d5

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-2025-68762
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:
	net/core/netpoll.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/a90d0dc38a10347078cca60e7495ad0648838f18
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/760bc6ceda8e2c273c0e2018ad2595967c3dd308
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e5235eb6cfe02a51256013a78f7b28779a7740d5