# CVE-2025-68746: spi: tegra210-quad: Fix timeout handling

> A null pointer dereference in the Tegra210 QSPI driver can cause a kernel crash when transfer timeouts occur under high CPU load.

- **Severity:** High 7.8 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/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:** 24 Dec 2025
- **Updated:** 16 Oct 2026
- **Also known as:** AZL-73102, BELL-CVE-2025-68746, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68746, GHSA-ghj7-pch2-m5m6, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2025-68746, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2025-68746, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-68746, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-68746

## What is CVE-2025-68746?

CVE-2025-68746 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux, published on 24 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:

spi: tegra210-quad: Fix timeout handling

When the CPU that the QSPI interrupt handler runs on (typically CPU 0)
is excessively busy, it can lead to rare cases of the IRQ thread not
running before the transfer timeout is reached.

While handling the timeouts, any pending transfers are cleaned up and
the message that they correspond to is marked as failed, which leaves
the curr_xfer field pointing at stale memory.

To avoid this, clear curr_xfer to NULL upon timeout and check for this
condition when the IRQ thread is finally run.

While at it, also make sure to clear interrupts on failure so that new
interrupts can be run.

A better, more involved, fix would move the interrupt clearing into a
hard IRQ handler. Ideally we would also want to signal that the IRQ
thread no longer needs to be run after the timeout is hit to avoid the
extra check for a valid transfer.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-68746?


## How do I fix CVE-2025-68746?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2025-68746 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-68746 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-68746 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-68746 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux, published on 24 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-2025-68746 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-2025-68746/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-68746/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-68746
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-68746
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-68746

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-68746/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.