# CVE-2025-38420: wifi: carl9170: do not ping device which has failed to load firmware

> A null pointer dereference in the carl9170 WiFi driver causes a kernel crash when pinging a device with failed firmware loading.

- **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:** 11 May 2026
- **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2025-38420, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38420, GHSA-8249-rqx5-qf75, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2025-38420, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2025-38420, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2025-38420, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-38420, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38420

## What is CVE-2025-38420?

CVE-2025-38420 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:

wifi: carl9170: do not ping device which has failed to load firmware

Syzkaller reports [1, 2] crashes caused by an attempts to ping
the device which has failed to load firmware. Since such a device
doesn't pass 'ieee80211_register_hw()', an internal workqueue
managed by 'ieee80211_queue_work()' is not yet created and an
attempt to queue work on it causes null-ptr-deref.

[1] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=9a4aec827829942045ff
[2] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=0d8afba53e8fb2633217

Weakness: CWE-476 (NULL Pointer Dereference)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-38420?

It affects 2 products.


Products: Debian Debian Linux, Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2025-38420?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2025-38420 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-38420 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

- [CVE-2015-3306](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2015-3306/): ProFTPD Improper Access Control (critical 10.0, exploited in the wild)
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- [CVE-2026-24061](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-24061/): GNU InetUtils Argument Injection (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2025-39682](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-39682/): Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2024-9680](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-9680/): Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-38420 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-38420 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-2025-38420 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-2025-38420/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-38420/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-38420
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-38420
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-38420

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-38420/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.