CVE-2025-38010 phy: tegra: xusb: Use a bitmask for UTMI pad power state tracking
A race condition in the Tegra XUSB driver causes reference count mismatches during suspend, leading to kernel warnings and potential system instability.
- 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-2025-38010?
CVE-2025-38010 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 18 Jun 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:
phy: tegra: xusb: Use a bitmask for UTMI pad power state tracking
The current implementation uses bias_pad_enable as a reference count to manage the shared bias pad for all UTMI PHYs. However, during system suspension with connected USB devices, multiple power-down requests for the UTMI pad result in a mismatch in the reference count, which in turn produces warnings such as:
[ 237.762967] WARNING: CPU: 10 PID: 1618 at tegra186_utmi_pad_power_down+0x160/0x170 [ 237.763103] Call trace: [ 237.763104] tegra186_utmi_pad_power_down+0x160/0x170 [ 237.763107] tegra186_utmi_phy_power_off+0x10/0x30 [ 237.763110] phy_power_off+0x48/0x100 [ 237.763113] tegra_xusb_enter_elpg+0x204/0x500 [ 237.763119] tegra_xusb_suspend+0x48/0x140 [ 237.763122] platform_pm_suspend+0x2c/0xb0 [ 237.763125] dpm_run_callback.isra.0+0x20/0xa0 [ 237.763127] __device_suspend+0x118/0x330 [ 237.763129] dpm_suspend+0x10c/0x1f0 [ 237.763130] dpm_suspend_start+0x88/0xb0 [ 237.763132] suspend_devices_and_enter+0x120/0x500 [ 237.763135] pm_suspend+0x1ec/0x270
The root cause was traced back to the dynamic power-down changes introduced in commit a30951d31b25 ("xhci: tegra: USB2 pad power controls"), where the UTMI pad was being powered down without verifying its current state. This unbalanced behavior led to discrepancies in the reference count.
To rectify this issue, this patch replaces the single reference counter with a bitmask, renamed to utmi_pad_enabled. Each bit in the mask corresponds to one of the four USB2 PHYs, allowing us to track each pad's enablement status individually.
With this change: - The bias pad is powered on only when the mask is clear. - Each UTMI pad is powered on or down based on its corresponding bit in the mask, preventing redundant operations. - The overall power state of the shared bias pad is maintained correctly during suspend/resume cycles.
The mutex used to prevent race conditions during UTMI pad enable/disable operations has been moved from the tegra186_utmi_bias_pad_power_on/off functions to the parent functions tegra186_utmi_pad_power_on/down. This change ensures that there are no race conditions when updating the bitmask.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-38010?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2025-38010?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2025-38010 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-38010 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-38010, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38010, GHSA-q4fh-5qfm-8423, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-38010, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38010.