Vulnerability Details CVE-2025-21921
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
net: ethtool: netlink: Allow NULL nlattrs when getting a phy_device
ethnl_req_get_phydev() is used to lookup a phy_device, in the case an
ethtool netlink command targets a specific phydev within a netdev's
topology.
It takes as a parameter a const struct nlattr *header that's used for
error handling :
if (!phydev) {
NL_SET_ERR_MSG_ATTR(extack, header,
"no phy matching phyindex");
return ERR_PTR(-ENODEV);
}
In the notify path after a ->set operation however, there's no request
attributes available.
The typical callsite for the above function looks like:
phydev = ethnl_req_get_phydev(req_base, tb[ETHTOOL_A_XXX_HEADER],
info->extack);
So, when tb is NULL (such as in the ethnl notify path), we have a nice
crash.
It turns out that there's only the PLCA command that is in that case, as
the other phydev-specific commands don't have a notification.
This commit fixes the crash by passing the cmd index and the nlattr
array separately, allowing NULL-checking it directly inside the helper.
Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score
EPSS Score 0.0
EPSS Ranking 15.0%
CVSS Severity
CVSS v3 Score 5.5
Products affected by CVE-2025-21921
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.1
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.10
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.11
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.12
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.13
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.14
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.15
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.16
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.17
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.18
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.2
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.3
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.4
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.5
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.6
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.7
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.8
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.12.9
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.13
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.13.1
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.13.2
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.13.3
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.13.4
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.13.5
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.13.6
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cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.14