CVE-2025-22009 regulator: dummy: force synchronous probing
A race condition in the Linux kernel regulator driver can cause a NULL pointer dereference at boot, leading to a system crash.
- 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-2025-22009?
CVE-2025-22009 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 8 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:
regulator: dummy: force synchronous probing
Sometimes I get a NULL pointer dereference at boot time in kobject_get() with the following call stack:
anatop_regulator_probe() devm_regulator_register() regulator_register() regulator_resolve_supply() kobject_get()
By placing some extra BUG_ON() statements I could verify that this is raised because probing of the 'dummy' regulator driver is not completed ('dummy_regulator_rdev' is still NULL).
In the JTAG debugger I can see that dummy_regulator_probe() and anatop_regulator_probe() can be run by different kernel threads (kworker/u4:*). I haven't further investigated whether this can be changed or if there are other possibilities to force synchronization between these two probe routines. On the other hand I don't expect much boot time penalty by probing the 'dummy' regulator synchronously.
Weakness: CWE-476
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-22009?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2025-22009?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2025-22009 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-22009 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as AZL-59859, BELL-CVE-2025-22009, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-22009, GHSA-g852-mvxx-736r, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-22009, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-22009.