CVE-2025-21902 acpi: typec: ucsi: Introduce a ->poll_cci method
A bug in the Linux kernel UCSI driver causes a kernel warning and potential instability during USB Type-C initialization, requiring a patch to fix.
- 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-2025-21902?
CVE-2025-21902 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 1 Apr 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:
acpi: typec: ucsi: Introduce a ->poll_cci method
For the ACPI backend of UCSI the UCSI "registers" are just a memory copy of the register values in an opregion. The ACPI implementation in the BIOS ensures that the opregion contents are synced to the embedded controller and it ensures that the registers (in particular CCI) are synced back to the opregion on notifications. While there is an ACPI call that syncs the actual registers to the opregion there is rarely a need to do this and on some ACPI implementations it actually breaks in various interesting ways.
The only reason to force a sync from the embedded controller is to poll CCI while notifications are disabled. Only the ucsi core knows if this is the case and guessing based on the current command is suboptimal, i.e. leading to the following spurious assertion splat:
WARNING: CPU: 3 PID: 76 at drivers/usb/typec/ucsi/ucsi.c:1388 ucsi_reset_ppm+0x1b4/0x1c0 [typec_ucsi] CPU: 3 UID: 0 PID: 76 Comm: kworker/3:0 Not tainted 6.12.11-200.fc41.x86_64 #1 Hardware name: LENOVO 21D0/LNVNB161216, BIOS J6CN45WW 03/17/2023 Workqueue: events_long ucsi_init_work [typec_ucsi] RIP: 0010:ucsi_reset_ppm+0x1b4/0x1c0 [typec_ucsi] Call Trace: <TASK> ucsi_init_work+0x3c/0xac0 [typec_ucsi] process_one_work+0x179/0x330 worker_thread+0x252/0x390 kthread+0xd2/0x100 ret_from_fork+0x34/0x50 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 </TASK>
Thus introduce a ->poll_cci() method that works like ->read_cci() with an additional forced sync and document that this should be used when polling with notifications disabled. For all other backends that presumably don't have this issue use the same implementation for both methods.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-21902?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2025-21902?
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-2025-21902 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-21902 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-21902, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-21902, GHSA-w69j-ppp7-83pp, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-21902.