CVE-2023-52985 arm64: dts: imx8mm-verdin: Do not power down eth-phy
A kernel crash occurs during system suspend on specific ARM64 hardware due to improper Ethernet PHY power management, causing a denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2023-52985?
CVE-2023-52985 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 27 Mar 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
arm64: dts: imx8mm-verdin: Do not power down eth-phy
Currently if suspending using either freeze or memory state, the fec driver tries to power down the phy which leads to crash of the kernel and non-responsible kernel with the following call trace:
[ 24.839889 ] Call trace: [ 24.839892 ] phy_error+0x18/0x60 [ 24.839898 ] kszphy_handle_interrupt+0x6c/0x80 [ 24.839903 ] phy_interrupt+0x20/0x2c [ 24.839909 ] irq_thread_fn+0x30/0xa0 [ 24.839919 ] irq_thread+0x178/0x2c0 [ 24.839925 ] kthread+0x154/0x160 [ 24.839932 ] ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20
Since there is currently no functionality in the phy subsystem to power down phys let's just disable the feature of powering-down the ethernet phy.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-52985?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2023-52985?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2023-52985 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-52985 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-52985, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-52985, GHSA-cc9v-j5mh-4rvx, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-52985.