Linux KernelOperating system · Linux
CVE-2025-38633
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedIn the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: clk: spacemit: mark K1 pll1_d8 as critical The pll1_d8 clock is enabled by the boot loader, and is ultimately a parent for numerous clocks, including those used by APB and AXI buses. Guodong Xu discovered that this clock got disabled while responding to getting -EPROBE_DEFER when requesting a reset controller. The needed clock (CLK_DMA, along with its parents) had already been enabled. To respond to the probe deferral return, the CLK_DMA clock was disabled, and this led to parent clocks also reducing their enable count. When the enable count for pll1_d8 was decremented it became 0, which caused it to be disabled. This led to a system hang. Marking that clock critical resolves this by preventing it from being disabled. Define a new macro CCU_FACTOR_GATE_DEFINE() to allow clock flags to be supplied for a CCU_FACTOR_GATE clock.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysisA detailed technical summary for this CVE is being prepared.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data
Linux KernelOperating system
= 6.16CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
dbcve · scopedLinux kernel 6.16.1 or later stable release
- Upgrade the Linux kernel to a version that includes the fix commit 10948c00e548e9ad2ce9d765baf26dce2d9b806b
- This patch marks the K1 pll1_d8 clock as critical to prevent it from being disabled
- After upgrading, verify that the kernel boots successfully and the system does not hang
Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.
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Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2025-38633 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2025-38633 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
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