Vulnerability · Published Jul 25, 2025 · Assigned by Linux

CVE-2025-38388firmware: arm_ffa: Replace mutex with rwlock to avoid sleep in atomic context

Medium 5.5

In plain English

A medium-severity security flaw in Linux from Linux. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.1% (higher than 3% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS NVD)5.5Medium
Exploit odds (30 days)0.1%top 96.5% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsnot in CISA KEV
Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: firmware: arm_ffa: Replace mutex with rwlock to avoid sleep in atomic context The current use of a mutex to protect the notifier hashtable accesses can lead to issues in the atomic context. It results in the below kernel warnings: | BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at kernel/locking/mutex.c:258 | in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 1, non_block: 0, pid: 9, name: kworker/0:0 | preempt_count: 1, expected: 0 | RCU nest depth: 0, expected: 0 | CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 9 Comm: kworker/0:0 Not tainted 6.14.0 #4 | Workqueue: ffa_pcpu_irq_notification notif_pcpu_irq_work_fn | Call trace: | show_stack+0x18/0x24 (C) | dump_stack_lvl+0x78/0x90 | dump_stack+0x18/0x24 | __might_resched+0x114/0x170 | __might_sleep+0x48/0x98 | mutex_lock+0x24/0x80 | handle_notif_callbacks+0x54/0xe0 | notif_get_and_handle+0x40/0x88 | generic_exec_single+0x80/0xc0 | smp_call_function_single+0xfc/0x1a0 | notif_pcpu_irq_work_fn+0x2c/0x38 | process_one_work+0x14c/0x2b4 | worker_thread+0x2e4/0x3e0 | kthread+0x13c/0x210 | ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20 To address this, replace the mutex with an rwlock to protect the notifier hashtable accesses. This ensures that read-side locking does not sleep and multiple readers can acquire the lock concurrently, avoiding unnecessary contention and potential deadlocks. Writer access remains exclusive, preserving correctness. This change resolves warnings from lockdep about potential sleep in atomic context.

Affected packages & fixed versions

EcosystemPackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian:13linux6.12.37-1DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38388
Debian:14linux6.12.37-1DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux6.8.0-100.100UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-allwinner-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-aws6.8.0-1046.49UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-aws-6.146.14.0-1015.15~24.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-aws-6.86.8.0-1046.49~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-azure6.8.0-1046.52UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.11no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.146.14.0-1014.14~24.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-6.86.8.0-1051.57~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-azure-fde6.8.0-1046.53UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:25.10linux-azure-fdeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-fde-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-fde-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-azure-fde-6.86.8.0-1046.53~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-azure-nvidiano fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-azure-nvidia-6.146.14.0-1007.7UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-gcp6.8.0-1047.50UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.11no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.146.14.0-1018.19~24.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-gcp-6.86.8.0-1047.50~22.04.2UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-gke6.8.0-1043.48UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-gkeop6.8.0-1030.33UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-hwe-6.11no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-hwe-6.86.8.0-100.100~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-ibm6.8.0-1044.44UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-ibm-6.86.8.0-1044.44~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-intelno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-intel-iot-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency6.8.0-100.100.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-6.11no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-lowlatency-hwe-6.86.8.0-100.100.1~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-nvidia6.8.0-1046.49UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-6.11no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-6.86.8.0-1046.49~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-lowlatency6.8.0-1046.49.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-nvidia-tegra6.8.0-1020.20UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-5.17no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.0no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.1no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.11no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.146.14.0-1014.14UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-oem-6.8no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-oracle6.8.0-1043.44UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-oracle-6.146.14.0-1015.15~24.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oracle-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-oracle-6.86.8.0-1043.44~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-raspi6.8.0-1047.51UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-raspi-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-realtimeno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscvno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-riscvno fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscv-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-riscv-6.146.14.0-34.34.1~24.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscv-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-riscv-6.86.8.0-100.100~22.04.1UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-5.19no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-6.2no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSlinux-starfive-6.5no fix listedUBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSlinux-xilinx6.8.0-1023.24UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38388

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
Linux Linux e0573444edbf4ee7e3c191d3d08a4ccbd26628be – before 31405510a48dcf054abfa5b7b8d70ce1b27d1f13e0573444edbf4ee7e3c191d3d08a4ccbd26628be – before 8986f8f61b482c0e6efd28f0b2423d9640c20eb1e0573444edbf4ee7e3c191d3d08a4ccbd26628be – before 9ca7a421229bbdfbe2e1e628cff5cfa782720a10
Linux Linux 6.7

References