Vulnerability Database

352,427

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2025-37989 — linux / linux_kernel

Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime

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

net: phy: leds: fix memory leak

A network restart test on a router led to an out-of-memory condition, which was traced to a memory leak in the PHY LED trigger code.

The root cause is misuse of the devm API. The registration function (phy_led_triggers_register) is called from phy_attach_direct, not phy_probe, and the unregister function (phy_led_triggers_unregister) is called from phy_detach, not phy_remove. This means the register and unregister functions can be called multiple times for the same PHY device, but devm-allocated memory is not freed until the driver is unbound.

This also prevents kmemleak from detecting the leak, as the devm API internally stores the allocated pointer.

Fix this by replacing devm_kzalloc/devm_kcalloc with standard kzalloc/kcalloc, and add the corresponding kfree calls in the unregister path.

  • Published: May 20, 2025
  • Updated: Dec 17, 2025
  • CVE: CVE-2025-37989
  • Severity: Medium
  • Exploit:
  • CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: Medium
  • Score: 5.5
  • AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CWEs:

Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.