# CVE-2025-37945: net: phy: allow MDIO bus PM ops to start/stop state machine for phylink-controlled PHY

> A null pointer dereference in the Linux kernel network PHY subsystem can cause a system crash during suspend/resume operations.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **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:** Yes
- **Published:** 20 May 2025
- **Updated:** 15 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** AZL-70346, AZL-70382, BELL-CVE-2025-37945, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-37945, GHSA-x689-8m9r-8332, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2025-37945, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2025-37945, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-37945, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-37945

## What is CVE-2025-37945?

CVE-2025-37945 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 20 May 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:

net: phy: allow MDIO bus PM ops to start/stop state machine for phylink-controlled PHY

DSA has 2 kinds of drivers:

1. Those who call dsa_switch_suspend() and dsa_switch_resume() from
   their device PM ops: qca8k-8xxx, bcm_sf2, microchip ksz
2. Those who don't: all others. The above methods should be optional.

For type 1, dsa_switch_suspend() calls dsa_user_suspend() -> phylink_stop(),
and dsa_switch_resume() calls dsa_user_resume() -> phylink_start().
These seem good candidates for setting mac_managed_pm = true because
that is essentially its definition [1], but that does not seem to be the
biggest problem for now, and is not what this change focuses on.

Talking strictly about the 2nd category of DSA drivers here (which
do not have MAC managed PM, meaning that for their attached PHYs,
mdio_bus_phy_suspend() and mdio_bus_phy_resume() should run in full),
I have noticed that the following warning from mdio_bus_phy_resume() is
triggered:

	WARN_ON(phydev->state != PHY_HALTED && phydev->state != PHY_READY &&
		phydev->state != PHY_UP);

because the PHY state machine is running.

It's running as a result of a previous dsa_user_open() -> ... ->
phylink_start() -> phy_start() having been initiated by the user.

The previous mdio_bus_phy_suspend() was supposed to have called
phy_stop_machine(), but it didn't. So this is why the PHY is in state
PHY_NOLINK by the time mdio_bus_phy_resume() runs.

mdio_bus_phy_suspend() did not call phy_stop_machine() because for
phylink, the phydev->adjust_link function pointer is NULL. This seems a
technicality introduced by commit fddd91016d16 ("phylib: fix PAL state
machine restart on resume"). That commit was written before phylink
existed, and was intended to avoid crashing with consumer drivers which
don't use the PHY state machine - phylink always does, when using a PHY.
But phylink itself has historically not been developed with
suspend/resume in mind, and apparently not tested too much in that
scenario, allowing this bug to exist unnoticed for so long. Plus, prior
to the WARN_ON(), it would have likely been invisible.

This issue is not in fact restricted to type 2 DSA drivers (according to
the above ad-hoc classification), but can be extrapolated to any MAC
driver with phylink and MDIO-bus-managed PHY PM ops. DSA is just where
the issue was reported. Assuming mac_managed_pm is set correctly, a
quick search indicates the following other drivers might be affected:

$ grep -Zlr PHYLINK_NETDEV drivers/ | xargs -0 grep -L mac_managed_pm
drivers/net/ethernet/atheros/ag71xx.c
drivers/net/ethernet/microchip/sparx5/sparx5_main.c
drivers/net/ethernet/microchip/lan966x/lan966x_main.c
drivers/net/ethernet/freescale/dpaa2/dpaa2-mac.c
drivers/net/ethernet/freescale/fs_enet/fs_enet-main.c
drivers/net/ethernet/freescale/dpaa/dpaa_eth.c
drivers/net/ethernet/freescale/ucc_geth.c
drivers/net/ethernet/freescale/enetc/enetc_pf_common.c
drivers/net/ethernet/marvell/mvpp2/mvpp2_main.c
drivers/net/ethernet/marvell/mvneta.c
drivers/net/ethernet/marvell/prestera/prestera_main.c
drivers/net/ethernet/mediatek/mtk_eth_soc.c
drivers/net/ethernet/altera/altera_tse_main.c
drivers/net/ethernet/wangxun/txgbe/txgbe_phy.c
drivers/net/ethernet/meta/fbnic/fbnic_phylink.c
drivers/net/ethernet/tehuti/tn40_phy.c
drivers/net/ethernet/mscc/ocelot_net.c

Make the existing conditions dependent on the PHY device having a
phydev->phy_link_change() implementation equal to the default
phy_link_change() provided by phylib. Otherwise, we implicitly know that
the phydev has the phylink-provided phylink_phy_change() callback, and
when phylink is used, the PHY state machine always needs to be stopped/
started on the suspend/resume path. The code is structured as such that
if phydev->phy_link_change() is absent, it is a matter of time until the
kernel will crash - no need to further complicate the test.

Thus, for the situation where the PM is not managed b
---truncated---

Weakness: CWE-476 (NULL Pointer Dereference)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-37945?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2025-37945?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2025-37945 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-37945 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

- [CVE-2026-53266](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53266/): Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-6282](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-6282/): Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2022-0185](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-0185/): Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-2094](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-2094/): Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-53362](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53362/): Linux Kernel Unspecified (high 7.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-37945 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-37945 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 20 May 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-37945 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux kernel. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-37945/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-37945/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-37945
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-37945
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-37945

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-37945/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.