CVE-2025-40034 PCI/AER: Avoid NULL pointer dereference in aer_ratelimit()
A missing NULL check in the Linux kernel PCI/AER driver allows a local attacker to cause a system crash via hardware error reporting.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2025-40034?
CVE-2025-40034 is a vulnerability in Linux, published on 28 Oct 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:
PCI/AER: Avoid NULL pointer dereference in aer_ratelimit()
When platform firmware supplies error information to the OS, e.g., via the ACPI APEI GHES mechanism, it may identify an error source device that doesn't advertise an AER Capability and therefore dev->aer_info, which contains AER stats and ratelimiting data, is NULL.
pci_dev_aer_stats_incr() already checks dev->aer_info for NULL, but aer_ratelimit() did not, leading to NULL pointer dereferences like this one from the URL below:
{1}[Hardware Error]: Hardware error from APEI Generic Hardware Error Source: 0 {1}[Hardware Error]: event severity: corrected {1}[Hardware Error]: device_id: 0000:00:00.0 {1}[Hardware Error]: vendor_id: 0x8086, device_id: 0x2020 {1}[Hardware Error]: aer_cor_status: 0x00001000, aer_cor_mask: 0x00002000 BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000264 RIP: 0010:___ratelimit+0xc/0x1b0 pci_print_aer+0x141/0x360 aer_recover_work_func+0xb5/0x130
[8086:2020] is an Intel "Sky Lake-E DMI3 Registers" device that claims to be a Root Port but does not advertise an AER Capability.
Add a NULL check in aer_ratelimit() to avoid the NULL pointer dereference. Note that this also prevents ratelimiting these events from GHES.
[bhelgaas: add crash details to commit log]
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-40034?
How do I fix CVE-2025-40034?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2025-40034 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-40034 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-40034, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-40034, GHSA-4wjr-gmwc-pw8f, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-40034.