CVE Catalog

CVE-2025-38735

HighCVSS 7.8
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.16%

5th percentile - higher than 5% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the GVE driver in the Linux kernel, a vulnerability allows ethtool operations to be invoked after shutdown(), causing dereference of freed pointers and leading to a kernel panic.

Risk Assessment

An attacker can exploit this vulnerability to cause a system crash (DoS) by forcing ethtool operations on the interface after shutdown, resulting in a kernel panic.

Recommendation

Apply the Linux kernel patch that calls netif_device_detach() in the shutdown() function to prevent ethtool operations after shutdown.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: gve: prevent ethtool ops after shutdown A crash can occur if an ethtool operation is invoked after shutdown() is called. shutdown() is invoked during system shutdown to stop DMA operations without performing expensive deallocations. It is discouraged to unregister the netdev in this path, so the device may still be visible to userspace and kernel helpers. In gve, shutdown() tears down most internal data structures. If an ethtool operation is dispatched after shutdown(), it will dereference freed or NULL pointers, leading to a kernel panic. While graceful shutdown normally quiesces userspace before invoking the reboot syscall, forced shutdowns (as observed on GCP VMs) can still trigger this path. Fix by calling netif_device_detach() in shutdown(). This marks the device as detached so the ethtool ioctl handler will skip dispatching operations to the driver.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS