CVE-2025-21701
HighCVSS 7.8Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk6th percentile - higher than 6% of all known CVEs
Summary
A race condition was found in the Linux kernel between device unregistration and ethtool operations (e.g., changing channel count). During unregistration, a mutex is destroyed, causing a DEBUG_LOCKS_WARN_ON warning and potential deadlock. The fix adds a broader check to deny ethtool operations on devices being dismantled.
Risk Assessment
The organization may experience system instability, debug warnings, or deadlocks when simultaneously unregistering network interfaces and modifying their ethtool configuration. This could lead to network service disruptions.
Recommendation
Immediately update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix (commit 5f0b7c6e8c9a). If updating is not possible, avoid concurrent interface unregistration and ethtool channel modifications.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
See all- CVE-2026-78409High
The X-mount.subdir option uses a detached-tree fast path on Linux 6.15 and later and passes the configured subdirectory to open_tree() with AT_SYMLINK_NOFOLLOW. That flag does not stop intermediate symlink traversal or keep resolution inside the newly mounted filesystem. A local unprivileged user with an fstab-authorized X-mount.subdir entry can attach a host path at the intended mountpoint.
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In the Linux kernel powerpc/pseries papr-phy-attest, missing validation of cmd.length could lead to buffer overflow. The fix adds length checks and fixes memory leaks on error paths.
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In the Linux kernel Synaptics RMI4 driver (F54), worker errors were not propagated to the V4L2 queue, causing stale or uninitialized data to be delivered to userspace. The fix adds error checking and marks buffers as error state.
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In the Linux kernel, the hynitron_cstxxx driver improperly validated touch count and finger IDs. This can lead to corrupted touch state or out-of-bounds buffer access.
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A use-after-free vulnerability was found in the Linux kernel's gpio-sloppy-logic-analyzer driver. The 'trigger' debugfs file lacked proper protection, allowing a write to freed memory during device unbind. The issue was fixed by using debugfs_create_file() instead of debugfs_create_file_unsafe().
- CVE-2026-80543Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the xcrb_msg_to_type6cprb_msgx() and xcrb_msg_to_type6_ep11cprb_msgx() functions for s390/zcrypt copy a user space message into a kernel buffer based on length, but further processing assumes 4-byte alignment. As a result, up to 3 bytes of uninitialized kernel memory are forwarded to further processing, potentially exposing kernel memory to the crypto card firmware.
- CVE-2026-80542Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the amdgpu driver for AMD Display has a NULL pointer dereference in amdgpu_dm_crtc_set_vblank() when vblank is enabled or queried before a stream is attached to acrtc_state->stream. This can lead to a system crash.
- CVE-2026-80535Unknown
In the Linux kernel XFS filesystem, during directory tree repair, a self-referential directory may be detected. In such a case, the repair code attempts to lock the same inode twice (double iolock/ilock), leading to a deadlock. The fix detects this corner case and handles it appropriately.
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: avoid race between device unregistration and ethnl ops The following trace can be seen if a device is being unregistered while its number of channels are being modified. DEBUG_LOCKS_WARN_ON(lock->magic != lock) WARNING: CPU: 3 PID: 3754 at kernel/locking/mutex.c:564 __mutex_lock+0xc8a/0x1120 CPU: 3 UID: 0 PID: 3754 Comm: ethtool Not tainted 6.13.0-rc6+ #771 RIP: 0010:__mutex_lock+0xc8a/0x1120 Call Trace: <TASK> ethtool_check_max_channel+0x1ea/0x880 ethnl_set_channels+0x3c3/0xb10 ethnl_default_set_doit+0x306/0x650 genl_family_rcv_msg_doit+0x1e3/0x2c0 genl_rcv_msg+0x432/0x6f0 netlink_rcv_skb+0x13d/0x3b0 genl_rcv+0x28/0x40 netlink_unicast+0x42e/0x720 netlink_sendmsg+0x765/0xc20 __sys_sendto+0x3ac/0x420 __x64_sys_sendto+0xe0/0x1c0 do_syscall_64+0x95/0x180 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e This is because unregister_netdevice_many_notify might run before the rtnl lock section of ethnl operations, eg. set_channels in the above example. In this example the rss lock would be destroyed by the device unregistration path before being used again, but in general running ethnl operations while dismantle has started is not a good idea. Fix this by denying any operation on devices being unregistered. A check was already there in ethnl_ops_begin, but not wide enough. Note that the same issue cannot be seen on the ioctl version (__dev_ethtool) because the device reference is retrieved from within the rtnl lock section there. Once dismantle started, the net device is unlisted and no reference will be found.