CVE-2025-21746: Input: synaptics - fix crash when enabling pass-through port

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.7 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-02-27 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-367

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: Input: synaptics - fix crash when enabling pass-through port When enabling a pass-through port an interrupt might come before psmouse driver binds to the pass-through port. However synaptics sub-driver tries to access psmouse instance presumably associated with the pass-through port to figure out if only 1 byte of response or entire protocol packet needs to be forwarded to the pass-through port and may crash if psmouse instance has not been attached to the port yet. Fix the crash by introducing open() and close() methods for the port and check if the port is open before trying to access psmouse instance. Because psmouse calls serio_open() only after attaching psmouse instance to serio port instance this prevents the potential crash.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.5 before 6.6.80; from 6.7 before 6.12.17; from 6.13 before 6.13.3 — fixed in 6.12.17, 6.13.3, 6.6.80

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.12.17, 6.13.3, 6.6.80. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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