CVE-2025-22009: regulator: dummy: force synchronous probing

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-04-08 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-476

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: regulator: dummy: force synchronous probing Sometimes I get a NULL pointer dereference at boot time in kobject_get() with the following call stack: anatop_regulator_probe() devm_regulator_register() regulator_register() regulator_resolve_supply() kobject_get() By placing some extra BUG_ON() statements I could verify that this is raised because probing of the 'dummy' regulator driver is not completed ('dummy_regulator_rdev' is still NULL). In the JTAG debugger I can see that dummy_regulator_probe() and anatop_regulator_probe() can be run by different kernel threads (kworker/u4:*). I haven't further investigated whether this can be changed or if there are other possibilities to force synchronization between these two probe routines. On the other hand I don't expect much boot time penalty by probing the 'dummy' regulator synchronously.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.4 before 6.6.85; from 6.7 before 6.12.21; from 6.13 before 6.13.9; 6.14-rc1, 6.14-rc2, 6.14-rc3, 6.14-rc4, 6.14-rc5, 6.14-rc6 (+1) — fixed in 6.12.21, 6.13.9, 6.6.85

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.12.21, 6.13.9, 6.6.85. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2025-22009 or the next vulnerability affects your stack