CVE-2025-38355 drm/xe: Process deferred GGTT node removals on device unwind

Medium 5.5 Published Updated

A race condition in the Linux kernel's Xe GPU driver causes a null pointer dereference during device unwind, leading to a system crash.

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-2025-38355?

CVE-2025-38355 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, 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/xe: Process deferred GGTT node removals on device unwind

While we are indirectly draining our dedicated workqueue ggtt->wq that we use to complete asynchronous removal of some GGTT nodes, this happends as part of the managed-drm unwinding (ggtt_fini_early), which could be later then manage-device unwinding, where we could already unmap our MMIO/GMS mapping (mmio_fini).

This was recently observed during unsuccessful VF initialization:

[ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: probe with driver xe failed with error -62 [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: DEVRES REL ffff88811e747340 __xe_bo_unpin_map_no_vm (16 bytes) [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: DEVRES REL ffff88811e747540 __xe_bo_unpin_map_no_vm (16 bytes) [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: DEVRES REL ffff88811e747240 __xe_bo_unpin_map_no_vm (16 bytes) [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: DEVRES REL ffff88811e747040 tiles_fini (16 bytes) [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: DEVRES REL ffff88811e746840 mmio_fini (16 bytes) [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: DEVRES REL ffff88811e747f40 xe_bo_pinned_fini (16 bytes) [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: DEVRES REL ffff88811e746b40 devm_drm_dev_init_release (16 bytes) [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: [drm:drm_managed_release] drmres release begin [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: [drm:drm_managed_release] REL ffff88810ef81640 __fini_relay (8 bytes) [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: [drm:drm_managed_release] REL ffff88810ef80d40 guc_ct_fini (8 bytes) [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: [drm:drm_managed_release] REL ffff88810ef80040 __drmm_mutex_release (8 bytes) [ ] xe 0000:00:02.1: [drm:drm_managed_release] REL ffff88810ef80140 ggtt_fini_early (8 bytes)

and this was leading to:

[ ] BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffc900058162a0 [ ] #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode [ ] #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page [ ] Oops: Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI [ ] Tainted: [W]=WARN [ ] Workqueue: xe-ggtt-wq ggtt_node_remove_work_func [xe] [ ] RIP: 0010:xe_ggtt_set_pte+0x6d/0x350 [xe] [ ] Call Trace: [ ] <TASK> [ ] xe_ggtt_clear+0xb0/0x270 [xe] [ ] ggtt_node_remove+0xbb/0x120 [xe] [ ] ggtt_node_remove_work_func+0x30/0x50 [xe] [ ] process_one_work+0x22b/0x6f0 [ ] worker_thread+0x1e8/0x3d

Add managed-device action that will explicitly drain the workqueue with all pending node removals prior to releasing MMIO/GSM mapping.

(cherry picked from commit 89d2835c3680ab1938e22ad81b1c9f8c686bd391)

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-38355?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2025-38355?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2025-38355 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-38355 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-38355, CLSA-2026-1775176186, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38355, GHSA-8x8p-vfxm-77vf, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38355.

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