CVE-2025-38633

MEDIUM

Linux Kernel - Clock Management Issue Leading to System Instability

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: clk: spacemit: mark K1 pll1_d8 as critical The pll1_d8 clock is enabled by the boot loader, and is ultimately a parent for numerous clocks, including those used by APB and AXI buses. Guodong Xu discovered that this clock got disabled while responding to getting -EPROBE_DEFER when requesting a reset controller. The needed clock (CLK_DMA, along with its parents) had already been enabled. To respond to the probe deferral return, the CLK_DMA clock was disabled, and this led to parent clocks also reducing their enable count. When the enable count for pll1_d8 was decremented it became 0, which caused it to be disabled. This led to a system hang. Marking that clock critical resolves this by preventing it from being disabled. Define a new macro CCU_FACTOR_GATE_DEFINE() to allow clock flags to be supplied for a CCU_FACTOR_GATE clock.

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0013
EPSS Percentile 2.8%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Details

Status published
Products (8)
linux/Kernel 6.16.0 - 6.16.1linux
Linux/Linux < 6.16
Linux/Linux 1b72c59db0add8e47fa116b21f78ed0b09a264f3 - 10948c00e548e9ad2ce9d765baf26dce2d9b806b
Linux/Linux 1b72c59db0add8e47fa116b21f78ed0b09a264f3 - 7554729de27daf6d54bcf8689d863bbe267828bf
Linux/Linux 6.16
Linux/Linux 6.16.1 - 6.16.*
Linux/Linux 6.17
linux/linux_kernel 6.16
Published Aug 22, 2025
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026