CVE-2025-68215 ice: fix PTP cleanup on driver removal in error path
A missing cleanup in the Linux kernel ice driver error path causes a use-after-free condition, leading to a system crash or warning during driver removal.
- 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-2025-68215?
CVE-2025-68215 is a high-severity use after free 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:
ice: fix PTP cleanup on driver removal in error path
Improve the cleanup on releasing PTP resources in error path. The error case might happen either at the driver probe and PTP feature initialization or on PTP restart (errors in reset handling, NVM update etc). In both cases, calls to PF PTP cleanup (ice_ptp_cleanup_pf function) and 'ps_lock' mutex deinitialization were missed. Additionally, ptp clock was not unregistered in the latter case.
Keep PTP state as 'uninitialized' on init to distinguish between error scenarios and to avoid resource release duplication at driver removal.
The consequence of missing ice_ptp_cleanup_pf call is the following call trace dumped when ice_adapter object is freed (port list is not empty, as it is required at this stage):
[ T93022] ------------[ cut here ]------------ [ T93022] WARNING: CPU: 10 PID: 93022 at ice/ice_adapter.c:67 ice_adapter_put+0xef/0x100 [ice] ... [ T93022] RIP: 0010:ice_adapter_put+0xef/0x100 [ice] ... [ T93022] Call Trace: [ T93022] <TASK> [ T93022] ? ice_adapter_put+0xef/0x100 [ice 33d2647ad4f6d866d41eefff1806df37c68aef0c] [ T93022] ? __warn.cold+0xb0/0x10e [ T93022] ? ice_adapter_put+0xef/0x100 [ice 33d2647ad4f6d866d41eefff1806df37c68aef0c] [ T93022] ? report_bug+0xd8/0x150 [ T93022] ? handle_bug+0xe9/0x110 [ T93022] ? exc_invalid_op+0x17/0x70 [ T93022] ? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x1a/0x20 [ T93022] ? ice_adapter_put+0xef/0x100 [ice 33d2647ad4f6d866d41eefff1806df37c68aef0c] [ T93022] pci_device_remove+0x42/0xb0 [ T93022] device_release_driver_internal+0x19f/0x200 [ T93022] driver_detach+0x48/0x90 [ T93022] bus_remove_driver+0x70/0xf0 [ T93022] pci_unregister_driver+0x42/0xb0 [ T93022] ice_module_exit+0x10/0xdb0 [ice 33d2647ad4f6d866d41eefff1806df37c68aef0c] ... [ T93022] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]--- [ T93022] ice: module unloaded
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-68215?
How do I fix CVE-2025-68215?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.
Is CVE-2025-68215 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-68215 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-68215, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68215, GHSA-xq58-x87q-vfg7, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-68215, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-68215.