# CVE-2025-68320: lan966x: Fix sleeping in atomic context

> A bug in the lan966x network driver causes a kernel warning and potential instability when reading stats, leading to denial of service.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 16 Dec 2025
- **Updated:** 5 Aug 2026
- **Also known as:** BELL-CVE-2025-68320, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68320, GHSA-f4gj-826g-pqfv, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2025-68320, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-68320, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-68320, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-68320

## What is CVE-2025-68320?

CVE-2025-68320 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 16 Dec 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

lan966x: Fix sleeping in atomic context

The following warning was seen when we try to connect using ssh to the device.

BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/locking/mutex.c:575
in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 0, non_block: 0, pid: 104, name: dropbear
preempt_count: 1, expected: 0
INFO: lockdep is turned off.
CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 104 Comm: dropbear Tainted: G        W           6.18.0-rc2-00399-g6f1ab1b109b9-dirty #530 NONE
Tainted: [W]=WARN
Hardware name: Generic DT based system
Call trace:
 unwind_backtrace from show_stack+0x10/0x14
 show_stack from dump_stack_lvl+0x7c/0xac
 dump_stack_lvl from __might_resched+0x16c/0x2b0
 __might_resched from __mutex_lock+0x64/0xd34
 __mutex_lock from mutex_lock_nested+0x1c/0x24
 mutex_lock_nested from lan966x_stats_get+0x5c/0x558
 lan966x_stats_get from dev_get_stats+0x40/0x43c
 dev_get_stats from dev_seq_printf_stats+0x3c/0x184
 dev_seq_printf_stats from dev_seq_show+0x10/0x30
 dev_seq_show from seq_read_iter+0x350/0x4ec
 seq_read_iter from seq_read+0xfc/0x194
 seq_read from proc_reg_read+0xac/0x100
 proc_reg_read from vfs_read+0xb0/0x2b0
 vfs_read from ksys_read+0x6c/0xec
 ksys_read from ret_fast_syscall+0x0/0x1c
Exception stack(0xf0b11fa8 to 0xf0b11ff0)
1fa0:                   00000001 00001000 00000008 be9048d8 00001000 00000001
1fc0: 00000001 00001000 00000008 00000003 be905920 0000001e 00000000 00000001
1fe0: 0005404c be9048c0 00018684 b6ec2cd8

It seems that we are using a mutex in a atomic context which is wrong.
Change the mutex with a spinlock.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-68320?


## How do I fix CVE-2025-68320?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2025-68320 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-68320 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-68320 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-68320 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 16 Dec 2025. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-68320 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-2025-68320/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-68320/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-68320
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-68320
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-68320

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-68320/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.