# CVE-2025-68184: drm/mediatek: Disable AFBC support on Mediatek DRM driver

> A bug in the Mediatek DRM driver causes vblank timeouts and garbled rendering, leading to system instability or denial of service.

- **Severity:** High 7.1 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/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:** 16 Dec 2025
- **Updated:** 5 Aug 2026
- **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2025-68184, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68184, GHSA-6r88-fjqw-x66f, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-68184, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2025-68184, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-68184, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-68184

## What is CVE-2025-68184?

CVE-2025-68184 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 16 Dec 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/mediatek: Disable AFBC support on Mediatek DRM driver

Commit c410fa9b07c3 ("drm/mediatek: Add AFBC support to Mediatek DRM
driver") added AFBC support to Mediatek DRM and enabled the
32x8/split/sparse modifier.

However, this is currently broken on Mediatek MT8188 (Genio 700 EVK
platform); tested using upstream Kernel and Mesa (v25.2.1), AFBC is used by
default since Mesa v25.0.

Kernel trace reports vblank timeouts constantly, and the render is garbled:

```
[CRTC:62:crtc-0] vblank wait timed out
WARNING: CPU: 7 PID: 70 at drivers/gpu/drm/drm_atomic_helper.c:1835 drm_atomic_helper_wait_for_vblanks.part.0+0x24c/0x27c
[...]
Hardware name: MediaTek Genio-700 EVK (DT)
Workqueue: events_unbound commit_work
pstate: 60400009 (nZCv daif +PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
pc : drm_atomic_helper_wait_for_vblanks.part.0+0x24c/0x27c
lr : drm_atomic_helper_wait_for_vblanks.part.0+0x24c/0x27c
sp : ffff80008337bca0
x29: ffff80008337bcd0 x28: 0000000000000061 x27: 0000000000000000
x26: 0000000000000001 x25: 0000000000000000 x24: ffff0000c9dcc000
x23: 0000000000000001 x22: 0000000000000000 x21: ffff0000c66f2f80
x20: ffff0000c0d7d880 x19: 0000000000000000 x18: 000000000000000a
x17: 000000040044ffff x16: 005000f2b5503510 x15: 0000000000000000
x14: 0000000000000000 x13: 74756f2064656d69 x12: 742074696177206b
x11: 0000000000000058 x10: 0000000000000018 x9 : ffff800082396a70
x8 : 0000000000057fa8 x7 : 0000000000000cce x6 : ffff8000823eea70
x5 : ffff0001fef5f408 x4 : ffff80017ccee000 x3 : ffff0000c12cb480
x2 : 0000000000000000 x1 : 0000000000000000 x0 : ffff0000c12cb480
Call trace:
 drm_atomic_helper_wait_for_vblanks.part.0+0x24c/0x27c (P)
 drm_atomic_helper_commit_tail_rpm+0x64/0x80
 commit_tail+0xa4/0x1a4
 commit_work+0x14/0x20
 process_one_work+0x150/0x290
 worker_thread+0x2d0/0x3ec
 kthread+0x12c/0x210
 ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20
---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---
```

Until this gets fixed upstream, disable AFBC support on this platform, as
it's currently broken with upstream Mesa.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-68184?


## How do I fix CVE-2025-68184?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2025-68184 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-68184 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-68184 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-68184 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 16 Dec 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-2025-68184 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: 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-2025-68184/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-68184/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-68184
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-68184
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-68184

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-68184/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.