CVE-2025-37917 net: ethernet: mtk-star-emac: fix spinlock recursion issues on rx/tx poll
A spinlock recursion bug in the MediaTek Star EMAC driver can cause a kernel panic, leading to a denial of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2025-37917?
CVE-2025-37917 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 20 May 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net: ethernet: mtk-star-emac: fix spinlock recursion issues on rx/tx poll
Use spin_lock_irqsave and spin_unlock_irqrestore instead of spin_lock and spin_unlock in mtk_star_emac driver to avoid spinlock recursion occurrence that can happen when enabling the DMA interrupts again in rx/tx poll.
``` BUG: spinlock recursion on CPU#0, swapper/0/0 lock: 0xffff00000db9cf20, .magic: dead4ead, .owner: swapper/0/0, .owner_cpu: 0 CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.15.0-rc2-next-20250417-00001-gf6a27738686c-dirty #28 PREEMPT Hardware name: MediaTek MT8365 Open Platform EVK (DT) Call trace: show_stack+0x18/0x24 (C) dump_stack_lvl+0x60/0x80 dump_stack+0x18/0x24 spin_dump+0x78/0x88 do_raw_spin_lock+0x11c/0x120 _raw_spin_lock+0x20/0x2c mtk_star_handle_irq+0xc0/0x22c [mtk_star_emac] __handle_irq_event_percpu+0x48/0x140 handle_irq_event+0x4c/0xb0 handle_fasteoi_irq+0xa0/0x1bc handle_irq_desc+0x34/0x58 generic_handle_domain_irq+0x1c/0x28 gic_handle_irq+0x4c/0x120 do_interrupt_handler+0x50/0x84 el1_interrupt+0x34/0x68 el1h_64_irq_handler+0x18/0x24 el1h_64_irq+0x6c/0x70 regmap_mmio_read32le+0xc/0x20 (P) _regmap_bus_reg_read+0x6c/0xac _regmap_read+0x60/0xdc regmap_read+0x4c/0x80 mtk_star_rx_poll+0x2f4/0x39c [mtk_star_emac] __napi_poll+0x38/0x188 net_rx_action+0x164/0x2c0 handle_softirqs+0x100/0x244 __do_softirq+0x14/0x20 ____do_softirq+0x10/0x20 call_on_irq_stack+0x24/0x64 do_softirq_own_stack+0x1c/0x40 __irq_exit_rcu+0xd4/0x10c irq_exit_rcu+0x10/0x1c el1_interrupt+0x38/0x68 el1h_64_irq_handler+0x18/0x24 el1h_64_irq+0x6c/0x70 cpuidle_enter_state+0xac/0x320 (P) cpuidle_enter+0x38/0x50 do_idle+0x1e4/0x260 cpu_startup_entry+0x34/0x3c rest_init+0xdc/0xe0 console_on_rootfs+0x0/0x6c __primary_switched+0x88/0x90 ```
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-37917?
It affects 2 products.
Products include Debian Debian Linux, Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2025-37917?
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-2025-37917 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-37917 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-37917, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-37917, GHSA-h8m2-hc42-j2c9, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2025-37917, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-37917, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-37917.