high 7.8

CVE-2025-38735 json

gve: prevent ethtool ops after shutdown

published 2025-09-05 14 mo ago modified 2026-10-19 20 d ago also EUVD-2025-31554

cvss: 7.8; version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.2%; EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 7%
public exploits: 0; none known

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

A crash can occur if an ethtool operation is invoked after shutdown() is called.

shutdown() is invoked during system shutdown to stop DMA operations without performing expensive deallocations. It is discouraged to unregister the netdev in this path, so the device may still be visible to userspace and kernel helpers.

In gve, shutdown() tears down most internal data structures. If an ethtool operation is dispatched after shutdown(), it will dereference freed or NULL pointers, leading to a kernel panic. While graceful shutdown normally quiesces userspace before invoking the reboot syscall, forced shutdowns (as observed on GCP VMs) can still trigger this path.

Fix by calling netif_device_detach() in shutdown(). This marks the device as detached so the ethtool ioctl handler will skip dispatching operations to the driver.

Patch / fix

fixed in 2 distros 4 links 5

Linux Linux 6.1.149, 6.6.103, 6.12.44, 6.16.4, 6.17
Siemens SIMATIC CN 4100 V5.0

debian ubuntu suse opensuse

linux Debian 12 6.1.153-1
linux Debian 13 6.12.48-1
linux Debian 14 6.16.5-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38735

linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-100.100
linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1046.49
linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1047.50
linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1043.48
linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1044.44
linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1046.52
linux-gkeop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1030.33
linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1047.51

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38735

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

kernel-rt Linux Micro 6.2 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-64kb SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-source SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-default SLES 16.0, SLE High Availability Extension 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2 +1 more 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-default-base SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1.160000.2.4
kernel-syms SLES 16.0, Linux Micro Extras 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-obs-qa SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-kvmsmall SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:21074-1 SUSE-SU-2025:21139-1 SUSE-SU-2026:20560-1 SUSE-SU-2025:21179-1 SUSE-SU-2025:4141-1 SUSE-SU-2025:4132-1

kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
kernel-kvmsmall openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2025:20081-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2025-38735 updated 2026-11-05 cvss 5.5

kernel: gve: prevent ethtool ops after shutdown

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
affected: workaround, no fix available “Fix deferred”
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more
not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

cisa ICSA-26-134-10 updated 2026-05-14 cvss 5.5

Siemens SIMATIC

Siemens SIMATIC CN 4100 < 5.0
affected: fixed in V5.0 support.industry.siemens.com

Facts from CISA's republication of the vendor's own advisory (CSAF); the linked advisory is the authoritative source. CISA notification · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation: none
Automatable: no
Technical impact: total
Assessed: 24 d ago (2026-10-15)

Exploit prediction

0.18% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 7% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.1	7.8	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	3.1	5.5	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

Linux Linux
Siemens SIMATIC CN 4100

Classification

Weakness

CWE-476 NULL Pointer Dereference

Technology feeds

Linux kernel rss critical rss

References

Sources

CVE List CVE-2025-38735
NVD CVE-2025-38735

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary