# CVE-2025-38354: drm/msm/gpu: Fix crash when throttling GPU immediately during boot

> A null pointer dereference in the Linux kernel MSM GPU driver causes a crash during boot if the GPU is hot, leading to denial of service.

- **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:** 25 Jul 2025
- **Updated:** 23 May 2026
- **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2025-38354, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38354, GHSA-9mf6-h5qw-3r5p, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2025-38354, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-38354, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38354

## What is CVE-2025-38354?

CVE-2025-38354 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 25 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:

drm/msm/gpu: Fix crash when throttling GPU immediately during boot

There is a small chance that the GPU is already hot during boot. In that
case, the call to of_devfreq_cooling_register() will immediately try to
apply devfreq cooling, as seen in the following crash:

  Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 0000000000014110
  pc : a6xx_gpu_busy+0x1c/0x58 [msm]
  lr : msm_devfreq_get_dev_status+0xbc/0x140 [msm]
  Call trace:
   a6xx_gpu_busy+0x1c/0x58 [msm] (P)
   devfreq_simple_ondemand_func+0x3c/0x150
   devfreq_update_target+0x44/0xd8
   qos_max_notifier_call+0x30/0x84
   blocking_notifier_call_chain+0x6c/0xa0
   pm_qos_update_target+0xd0/0x110
   freq_qos_apply+0x3c/0x74
   apply_constraint+0x88/0x148
   __dev_pm_qos_update_request+0x7c/0xcc
   dev_pm_qos_update_request+0x38/0x5c
   devfreq_cooling_set_cur_state+0x98/0xf0
   __thermal_cdev_update+0x64/0xb4
   thermal_cdev_update+0x4c/0x58
   step_wise_manage+0x1f0/0x318
   __thermal_zone_device_update+0x278/0x424
   __thermal_cooling_device_register+0x2bc/0x308
   thermal_of_cooling_device_register+0x10/0x1c
   of_devfreq_cooling_register_power+0x240/0x2bc
   of_devfreq_cooling_register+0x14/0x20
   msm_devfreq_init+0xc4/0x1a0 [msm]
   msm_gpu_init+0x304/0x574 [msm]
   adreno_gpu_init+0x1c4/0x2e0 [msm]
   a6xx_gpu_init+0x5c8/0x9c8 [msm]
   adreno_bind+0x2a8/0x33c [msm]
   ...

At this point we haven't initialized the GMU at all yet, so we cannot read
the GMU registers inside a6xx_gpu_busy(). A similar issue was fixed before
in commit 6694482a70e9 ("drm/msm: Avoid unclocked GMU register access in
6xx gpu_busy"): msm_devfreq_init() does call devfreq_suspend_device(), but
unlike msm_devfreq_suspend(), it doesn't set the df->suspended flag
accordingly. This means the df->suspended flag does not match the actual
devfreq state after initialization and msm_devfreq_get_dev_status() will
end up accessing GMU registers, causing the crash.

Fix this by setting df->suspended correctly during initialization.

Patchwork: https://patchwork.freedesktop.org/patch/650772/

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-38354?

It affects 2 products.


Products: Debian Debian Linux, Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2025-38354?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2025-38354 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-38354 in the wild and no public exploit code.

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## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-38354 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-38354 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 25 Jul 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-2025-38354 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Debian Debian Linux. 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-2025-38354/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-38354/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-38354
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-38354
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-38354

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-38354/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.