🛡️ CVE-2025-38735 on Debian — linux

⚪ Unknown ✅ No Known Exploit OSV
N/A
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

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.

Distribution advisory

This page covers CVE-2025-38735 as tracked by Debian, for the package linux. The fix is available in version 6.16.5-1; earlier versions remain affected.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached with local access to the system, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs low-level privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality none, integrity none, availability high.

Weakness class

DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38735 is classified as CWE-476: NULL Pointer Dereference. A pointer that can be null is used without a check, crashing the process.

Affected software

DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38735 is recorded against 2 packages.

  • linux (fixed in 6.16.5-1)
  • linux-6.1 (fixed in 6.1.153-1~deb11u1)

Timeline and source

Published on 5 September 2025 and last revised on 4 August 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from OSV.

References

security-tracker.debian.org (Advisory)

CVE-2025-38735 on other distributions

Each distribution ships its own build and its own fixed version. Pick the one you run:

Details

Severity Unknown
CVSS Score N/A
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source OSV
Published 2025-09-05
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-08-04
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
linux — 6.16.5-1
linux-6.1 — 6.1.153-1~deb11u1

Similar Threats

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