CVE-2025-38036 drm/xe/vf: Perform early GT MMIO initialization to read GMDID
A null pointer dereference in the Linux kernel's Xe GPU driver causes a crash when Virtual Functions attempt to read GMDID values.
- 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-2025-38036?
CVE-2025-38036 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:
drm/xe/vf: Perform early GT MMIO initialization to read GMDID
VFs need to communicate with the GuC to obtain the GMDID value and existing GuC functions used for that assume that the GT has it's MMIO members already setup. However, due to recent refactoring the gt->mmio is initialized later, and any attempt by the VF to use xe_mmio_read|write() from GuC functions will lead to NPD crash due to unset MMIO register address:
[] xe 0000:00:02.1: [drm] Running in SR-IOV VF mode [] xe 0000:00:02.1: [drm] GT0: sending H2G MMIO 0x5507 [] BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: 0000000000190240
Since we are already tweaking the id and type of the primary GT to mimic it's a Media GT before initializing the GuC communication, we can also call xe_gt_mmio_init() to perform early setup of the gt->mmio which will make those GuC functions work again.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-38036?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2025-38036?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2025-38036 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-38036 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-38036, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38036, ECHO-8fd6-6a7b-45a8, GHSA-gvpw-xr49-hcwq, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-38036, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2025-38036 and 2 more.