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Medium severity5.5NVD Advisory· Published Jul 28, 2025· Updated May 12, 2026

CVE-2025-38470

CVE-2025-38470

Description

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

net: vlan: fix VLAN 0 refcount imbalance of toggling filtering during runtime

Assuming the "rx-vlan-filter" feature is enabled on a net device, the 8021q module will automatically add or remove VLAN 0 when the net device is put administratively up or down, respectively. There are a couple of problems with the above scheme.

The first problem is a memory leak that can happen if the "rx-vlan-filter" feature is disabled while the device is running:

# ip link add bond1 up type bond mode 0 # ethtool -K bond1 rx-vlan-filter off # ip link del dev bond1

When the device is put administratively down the "rx-vlan-filter" feature is disabled, so the 8021q module will not remove VLAN 0 and the memory will be leaked [1].

Another problem that can happen is that the kernel can automatically delete VLAN 0 when the device is put administratively down despite not adding it when the device was put administratively up since during that time the "rx-vlan-filter" feature was disabled. null-ptr-unref or bug_on[2] will be triggered by unregister_vlan_dev() for refcount imbalance if toggling filtering during runtime:

$ ip link add bond0 type bond mode 0 $ ip link add link bond0 name vlan0 type vlan id 0 protocol 802.1q $ ethtool -K bond0 rx-vlan-filter off $ ifconfig bond0 up $ ethtool -K bond0 rx-vlan-filter on $ ifconfig bond0 down $ ip link del vlan0

Root cause is as below: step1: add vlan0 for real_dev, such as bond, team. register_vlan_dev vlan_vid_add(real_dev,htons(ETH_P_8021Q),0) //refcnt=1 step2: disable vlan filter feature and enable real_dev step3: change filter from 0 to 1 vlan_device_event vlan_filter_push_vids ndo_vlan_rx_add_vid //No refcnt added to real_dev vlan0 step4: real_dev down vlan_device_event vlan_vid_del(dev, htons(ETH_P_8021Q), 0); //refcnt=0 vlan_info_rcu_free //free vlan0 step5: delete vlan0 unregister_vlan_dev BUG_ON(!vlan_info); //vlan_info is null

Fix both problems by noting in the VLAN info whether VLAN 0 was automatically added upon NETDEV_UP and based on that decide whether it should be deleted upon NETDEV_DOWN, regardless of the state of the "rx-vlan-filter" feature.

[1] unreferenced object 0xffff8880068e3100 (size 256): comm "ip", pid 384, jiffies 4296130254 hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 20 30 0d 80 88 ff ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 . 0............. 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace (crc 81ce31fa): __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x2b5/0x340 vlan_vid_add+0x434/0x940 vlan_device_event.cold+0x75/0xa8 notifier_call_chain+0xca/0x150 __dev_notify_flags+0xe3/0x250 rtnl_configure_link+0x193/0x260 rtnl_newlink_create+0x383/0x8e0 __rtnl_newlink+0x22c/0xa40 rtnl_newlink+0x627/0xb00 rtnetlink_rcv_msg+0x6fb/0xb70 netlink_rcv_skb+0x11f/0x350 netlink_unicast+0x426/0x710 netlink_sendmsg+0x75a/0xc20 __sock_sendmsg+0xc1/0x150 ____sys_sendmsg+0x5aa/0x7b0 ___sys_sendmsg+0xfc/0x180

[2] kernel BUG at net/8021q/vlan.c:99! Oops: invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN PTI CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 382 Comm: ip Not tainted 6.16.0-rc3 #61 PREEMPT(voluntary) Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.13.0-0-gf21b5a4aeb02-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:unregister_vlan_dev (net/8021q/vlan.c:99 (discriminator 1)) RSP: 0018:ffff88810badf310 EFLAGS: 00010246 RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffff88810da84000 RCX: ffffffffb47ceb9a RDX: dffffc0000000000 RSI: 0000000000000008 RDI: ffff88810e8b43c8 RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: fffffbfff6cefe80 R10: ffffffffb677f407 R11: ffff88810badf3c0 R12: ffff88810e8b4000 R13: 0000000000000000 R14: ffff88810642a5c0 R15: 000000000000017e FS: 00007f1ff68c20c0(0000) GS:ffff888163a24000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00007f1ff5dad240 CR3: 0000000107e56000 CR4: 00000000000006f0 Call Trace: <TASK ---truncated---

AI Insight

LLM-synthesized narrative grounded in this CVE's description and references.

The Linux kernel VLAN 8021q module has a reference count imbalance for VLAN ID 0 when the rx-vlan-filter feature is toggled at runtime, leading to a memory leak or a NULL-pointer dereference.

In the Linux kernel, a reference count imbalance occurs in the 8021q VLAN module when the "rx-vlan-filter" feature is toggled on a net device while it is running. The root cause is that the automatic add/remove logic for VLAN ID 0, which is triggered by administrative up/down events, does not correctly track whether the filter was enabled at the time of the device transition, leading to mismatched refcount operations.

To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker needs local access and the ability to create VLAN interfaces, change device flags via ethtool, and bring a device administratively up or down. For example, creating a VLAN 0 interface on a bonding device, disabling the rx-vlan-filter feature with the device down, then bringing it up and re-enabling filtering, followed by bringing the device down, can trigger a NULL-pointer dereference when the VLAN 0 interface is later deleted [1].

The impact of this flaw can range from a memory leak (if the filter is disabled without removing VLAN 0) to a kernel crash (BUG_ON) caused by a refcount underflow that frees VLAN metadata prematurely. In the crash scenario, the system becomes unavailable, making this a denial-of-service vulnerability that can be triggered by an unprivileged user with network configuration capabilities [1].

Patches have been merged into the Linux kernel stable branches to fix both the memory leak and the refcount imbalance. The fix ensures that the VLAN info structure tracks whether VLAN 0 has been added due to filtering, preventing mismatched add/remove operations [2]. Siemens has also released a security advisory (SSA-082556) noting that certain SIMATIC S7-1500 CPU products may be affected and recommends updating to patched kernel versions [1].

References
  1. SSA-082556
  2. Making sure you're not a bot!

AI Insight generated on May 19, 2026. Synthesized from this CVE's description and the cited reference URLs; citations are validated against the source bundle.

Affected products

2

Patches

0

No patches discovered yet.

Vulnerability mechanics

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References

11

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