CVE-2025-38537

MEDIUM
MEDIUM Priority: 0.01 BB Relevance: 36/100
Published: 2025-08-16 Modified: 2026-11-05 First seen: 2026-11-05 Status: active

Attack Surface

Low Complexity No Interaction

CVSS Vector Breakdown

AV: Local
AC: Low
PR: Low
UI: None
S: Unchanged
C: None
I: None
A: High

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: phy: Don't register LEDs for genphy If a PHY has no driver, the genphy driver is probed/removed directly in phy_attach/detach. If the PHY's ofnode has an "leds" subnode, then the LEDs will be (un)registered when probing/removing the genphy driver. This could occur if the leds are for a non-generic driver that isn't loaded for whatever reason. Synchronously removing the PHY device in phy_detach leads to the following deadlock: rtnl_lock() ndo_close() ... phy_detach() phy_remove() phy_leds_unregister() led_classdev_unregister() led_trigger_set() netdev_trigger_deactivate() unregister_netdevice_notifier() rtnl_lock() There is a corresponding deadlock on the open/register side of things (and that one is reported by lockdep), but it requires a race while this one is deterministic. Generic PHYs do not support LEDs anyway, so don't bother registering them.

Affected Software (12)

VendorProductVersion
Linux Linux 01e5b728e9e43ae444e0369695a5f72209906464 < ec158d05eaa91b2809cab65f8068290e3c05ebdd
Linux Linux 01e5b728e9e43ae444e0369695a5f72209906464 < fd6493533af9e5d73d0d42ff2a8ded978a701dc6
Linux Linux 01e5b728e9e43ae444e0369695a5f72209906464 < 75e1b2079ef0653a2f7aa69be515d86b7faf1908
Linux Linux 01e5b728e9e43ae444e0369695a5f72209906464 < f0f2b992d8185a0366be951685e08643aae17d6d
Linux Linux 6.4
linux linux_kernel 6.4 – 6.6.100
linux linux_kernel 6.16
linux linux_kernel 6.16
linux linux_kernel 6.16
linux linux_kernel 6.16
linux linux_kernel 6.16
linux linux_kernel 6.16

Bug Bounty Relevance

36 / 100
✓ Low complexity
✓ No user interaction

CVSS Score

5.5 / 10.0 v3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS — Exploitation Probability

0.16%
Raw Score 0.001640
Percentile 5.6%
Date 2026-11-14

EPSS Trend

2026-11-14
0.00164
2026-11-13
0.00164
2026-11-12
0.00164
2026-11-10
0.00164
2026-11-09
0.00164
2026-11-08
0.00164
2026-11-07
0.00164
2026-11-06
0.00164
2026-11-05
0.00154

Intelligence Sources

mitre ref →
nvd ref →