CVE-2025-38094: net: cadence: macb: Fix a possible deadlock in macb_halt_tx.

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: 2025-07-03 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-667

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: cadence: macb: Fix a possible deadlock in macb_halt_tx. There is a situation where after THALT is set high, TGO stays high as well. Because jiffies are never updated, as we are in a context with interrupts disabled, we never exit that loop and have a deadlock. That deadlock was noticed on a sama5d4 device that stayed locked for days. Use retries instead of jiffies so that the timeout really works and we do not have a deadlock anymore.

Affected products

Debian Linux: 11.0
Linux kernel: from 3.8 before 5.10.238; from 5.11 before 5.15.184; from 5.16 before 6.1.140; from 6.2 before 6.6.92; from 6.7 before 6.12.30; from 6.13 before 6.14.8 — fixed in 5.10.238, 5.15.184, 6.1.140, 6.12.30, 6.14.8, 6.6.92

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.238, 5.15.184, 6.1.140, 6.12.30. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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