CVE-2025-38311 iavf: get rid of the crit lock

What is CVE-2025-38311?

CVE-2025-38311 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 10 Jul 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:

iavf: get rid of the crit lock

Get rid of the crit lock. That frees us from the error prone logic of try_locks.

Thanks to netdev_lock() by Jakub it is now easy, and in most cases we were protected by it already - replace crit lock by netdev lock when it was not the case.

Lockdep reports that we should cancel the work under crit_lock [splat1], and that was the scheme we have mostly followed since [1] by Slawomir. But when that is done we still got into deadlocks [splat2]. So instead we should look at the bigger problem, namely "weird locking/scheduling" of the iavf. The first step to fix that is to remove the crit lock. I will followup with a -next series that simplifies scheduling/tasks.

Cancel the work without netdev lock (weird unlock+lock scheme), to fix the [splat2] (which would be totally ugly if we would kept the crit lock).

Extend protected part of iavf_watchdog_task() to include scheduling more work.

Note that the removed comment in iavf_reset_task() was misplaced, it belonged to inside of the removed if condition, so it's gone now.

[splat1] - w/o this patch - The deadlock during VF removal: WARNING: possible circular locking dependency detected sh/3825 is trying to acquire lock: ((work_completion)(&(&adapter->watchdog_task)->work)){+.+.}-{0:0}, at: start_flush_work+0x1a1/0x470 but task is already holding lock: (&adapter->crit_lock){+.+.}-{4:4}, at: iavf_remove+0xd1/0x690 [iavf] which lock already depends on the new lock.

[splat2] - when cancelling work under crit lock, w/o this series, see [2] for the band aid attempt WARNING: possible circular locking dependency detected sh/3550 is trying to acquire lock: ((wq_completion)iavf){+.+.}-{0:0}, at: touch_wq_lockdep_map+0x26/0x90 but task is already holding lock: (&dev->lock){+.+.}-{4:4}, at: iavf_remove+0xa6/0x6e0 [iavf] which lock already depends on the new lock.

[1] fc2e6b3b132a ("iavf: Rework mutexes for better synchronisation") [2] https://github.com/pkitszel/linux/commit/52dddbfc2bb60294083f5711a158a

Weakness: CWE-667

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-38311?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2025-38311?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2025-38311 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-38311 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as AZL-65019, BELL-CVE-2025-38311, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38311, GHSA-g72f-6g67-w739, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2025-38311, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-38311 and 2 more.