CVE-2025-71118 ACPICA: Avoid walking the Namespace if start_node is NULL
A null pointer dereference in the Linux kernel ACPICA namespace walker causes a system crash when processing specific ACPI tables.
- 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-2025-71118?
CVE-2025-71118 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 14 Jan 2026. 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:
ACPICA: Avoid walking the Namespace if start_node is NULL
Although commit 0c9992315e73 ("ACPICA: Avoid walking the ACPI Namespace if it is not there") fixed the situation when both start_node and acpi_gbl_root_node are NULL, the Linux kernel mainline now still crashed on Honor Magicbook 14 Pro [1].
That happens due to the access to the member of parent_node in acpi_ns_get_next_node(). The NULL pointer dereference will always happen, no matter whether or not the start_node is equal to ACPI_ROOT_OBJECT, so move the check of start_node being NULL out of the if block.
Unfortunately, all the attempts to contact Honor have failed, they refused to provide any technical support for Linux.
The bad DSDT table's dump could be found on GitHub [2].
DMI: HONOR FMB-P/FMB-P-PCB, BIOS 1.13 05/08/2025
[ rjw: Subject adjustment, changelog edits ]
Weakness: CWE-476
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-71118?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2025-71118?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2025-71118 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-71118 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as AZL-74562, BELL-CVE-2025-71118, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-71118, GHSA-ff5f-2mh8-cffp, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2025-71118, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-71118 and 1 more.