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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2025-40189 json

net: usb: lan78xx: Fix lost EEPROM read timeout error(-ETIMEDOUT) in lan78xx_read_raw_eeprom

published 2025-11-12 11 mo ago modified 2026-10-19 20 d ago also EUVD-2025-150385

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 9%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

net: usb: lan78xx: Fix lost EEPROM read timeout error(-ETIMEDOUT) in lan78xx_read_raw_eeprom

Syzbot reported read of uninitialized variable BUG with following call stack.

lan78xx 8-1:1.0 (unnamed net_device) (uninitialized): EEPROM read operation timeout ===================================================== BUG: KMSAN: uninit-value in lan78xx_read_eeprom drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:1095 [inline] BUG: KMSAN: uninit-value in lan78xx_init_mac_address drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:1937 [inline] BUG: KMSAN: uninit-value in lan78xx_reset+0x999/0x2cd0 drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:3241 lan78xx_read_eeprom drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:1095 [inline] lan78xx_init_mac_address drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:1937 [inline] lan78xx_reset+0x999/0x2cd0 drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:3241 lan78xx_bind+0x711/0x1690 drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:3766 lan78xx_probe+0x225c/0x3310 drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:4707

Local variable sig.i.i created at: lan78xx_read_eeprom drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:1092 [inline] lan78xx_init_mac_address drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:1937 [inline] lan78xx_reset+0x77e/0x2cd0 drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:3241 lan78xx_bind+0x711/0x1690 drivers/net/usb/lan78xx.c:3766

The function lan78xx_read_raw_eeprom failed to properly propagate EEPROM read timeout errors (-ETIMEDOUT). In the fallthrough path, it first attempted to restore the pin configuration for LED outputs and then returned only the status of that restore operation, discarding the original timeout error.

As a result, callers could mistakenly treat the data buffer as valid even though the EEPROM read had actually timed out with no data or partial data.

To fix this, handle errors in restoring the LED pin configuration separately. If the restore succeeds, return any prior EEPROM timeout error correctly to the caller.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.17.4, 6.18
  • linux Debian 14 6.17.6-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-40189

  • linux Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-14.14
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1007.7
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1007.7
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1008.8
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1008.8
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-14.14.1
  • linux-oracle Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1007.7
  • linux-aws-6.17 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.17.0-1007.7~24.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-40189

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

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-2025-40189 updated

kernel: net: usb: lan78xx: Fix lost EEPROM read timeout error(-ETIMEDOUT) in lan78xx_read_raw_eeprom

  • 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 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
    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

Exploit prediction

0.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 9% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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