CVE-2025-38121: wifi: iwlwifi: mld: avoid panic on init failure

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-476

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: wifi: iwlwifi: mld: avoid panic on init failure In case of an error during init, in_hw_restart will be set, but it will never get cleared. Instead, we will retry to init again, and then we will act like we are in a restart when we are actually not. This causes (among others) to a NULL pointer dereference when canceling rx_omi::finished_work, that was not even initialized, because we thought that we are in hw_restart. Set in_hw_restart to true only if the fw is running, then we know that FW was loaded successfully and we are not going to the retry loop.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.14 before 6.15.3 — fixed in 6.15.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.15.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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