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Linux Kernel CVE-2025-68746

HIGH
2025-12-24 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
High
Disputed · 7.8 Vendor: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
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Severity by source

Sources disagree (Low–High)
Vendor (416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67) PRIMARY
7.8 HIGH
AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
vuln.today AI
7.0 HIGH

Local trigger (AV:L) by an unprivileged user driving SPI transfers (PR:L); the timeout-before-IRQ race makes it timing-dependent (AC:H); use-after-free can corrupt kernel memory (C/I/A:H).

3.1 AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
4.0 AV:L/AC:H/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
SUSE
4.7 MEDIUM
AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Red Hat
3.3 LOW
qualitative

vuln.today treats the vendor’s rating as authoritative. A higher third-party CVSS (e.g. CISA-ADP) is shown for transparency but does not drive the headline severity.

CVSS VectorVendor: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Lifecycle Timeline

2
Analysis Generated
Jul 30, 2026 - 07:01 vuln.today
CVE Published
Dec 24, 2025 - 13:16 cve.org
HIGH 7.8

DescriptionCVE.org

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

spi: tegra210-quad: Fix timeout handling

When the CPU that the QSPI interrupt handler runs on (typically CPU 0) is excessively busy, it can lead to rare cases of the IRQ thread not running before the transfer timeout is reached.

While handling the timeouts, any pending transfers are cleaned up and the message that they correspond to is marked as failed, which leaves the curr_xfer field pointing at stale memory.

To avoid this, clear curr_xfer to NULL upon timeout and check for this condition when the IRQ thread is finally run.

While at it, also make sure to clear interrupts on failure so that new interrupts can be run.

A better, more involved, fix would move the interrupt clearing into a hard IRQ handler. Ideally we would also want to signal that the IRQ thread no longer needs to be run after the timeout is hit to avoid the extra check for a valid transfer.

AnalysisAI

Use-after-free in the Linux kernel's Tegra210 QSPI (tegra210-quad) SPI controller driver arises when a transfer times out before the threaded IRQ handler runs, leaving the curr_xfer field pointing at freed memory that the IRQ thread may later dereference. Local low-privileged users on NVIDIA Tegra-based systems could trigger memory corruption affecting confidentiality, integrity, and availability, though exploitation depends on winning a narrow timing race. There is no public exploit identified at time of analysis and it is not listed in CISA KEV; the fix is delivered as upstream stable-tree commits.

Technical ContextAI

The affected component is drivers/spi/spi-tegra210-quad.c, the SPI/QSPI (Quad Serial Peripheral Interface) master driver for NVIDIA Tegra210-class SoCs. The bug is a stale-pointer / use-after-free condition (CWE-416 class; input lists CWE as N/A) in the driver's timeout path: when the CPU servicing the QSPI interrupt (typically CPU 0) is saturated, the threaded IRQ handler may not run before the transfer timeout fires. The timeout cleanup path frees/completes the pending message and marks it failed, but curr_xfer is left pointing at that now-stale memory. If the delayed IRQ thread subsequently runs, it dereferences the dangling pointer. The remediation clears curr_xfer to NULL on timeout, checks for that NULL condition in the IRQ thread, and clears pending interrupts on failure so subsequent interrupts can be serviced.

Affected ProductsAI

The Linux kernel, specifically the Tegra210 Quad SPI controller driver (spi-tegra210-quad) used on NVIDIA Tegra210-class SoCs, is affected on all versions containing the flawed timeout handling prior to the fix. No CPE strings were provided in the input and exact vulnerable version ranges were not enumerated by NVD; the affected/fixed boundaries can be derived from the seven stable-tree commits referenced (e.g., https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bb0c58be84f907285af45657c1d4847b960a12bf and the parallel backports 01bbf25c..., 551060ef..., 83309dd5..., 88db8bb7..., b4e002d8..., c934e402...), which indicates backporting across multiple stable branches. Only systems that build and use the tegra210-quad SPI driver (NVIDIA Tegra hardware such as Jetson platforms) are exposed.

RemediationAI

Upstream fix available via the referenced git.kernel.org stable commits (PR/commit form; no single tagged release version was provided in the input) - update to the stable kernel release for your branch that includes commit bb0c58be84f907285af45657c1d4847b960a12bf or its backport (01bbf25c..., 551060ef..., 83309dd5..., 88db8bb7..., b4e002d8..., c934e402...) that clears curr_xfer to NULL on timeout, validates it in the IRQ thread, and clears interrupts on failure. Apply the distribution kernel update that incorporates these commits; released patched version numbers are not independently confirmed from the provided data. As a compensating control where immediate patching is not possible, the exposure is limited to platforms actually using the Tegra QSPI controller, so restricting local access to affected Tegra devices and reducing unprivileged workloads that can saturate the IRQ-handling CPU lowers the chance of hitting the timing window; these are mitigations only and do not remove the underlying use-after-free.

Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: Moderate
Product Status
Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/baremetal-os-container:latest Affected
Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/base-os-container:2.1.3-7.95 Image SL-Micro Affected
Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/kvm-os-container:2.1.3-6.115 Affected
Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/rt-os-container:2.1.3-7.146 Affected
Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/toolbox:latest Affected

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CVE-2025-68746 vulnerability details – vuln.today

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