Vulnerability Database

352,427

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2025-38336 — linux / linux_kernel

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

ata: pata_via: Force PIO for ATAPI devices on VT6415/VT6330

The controller has a hardware bug that can hard hang the system when doing ATAPI DMAs without any trace of what happened. Depending on the device attached, it can also prevent the system from booting.

In this case, the system hangs when reading the ATIP from optical media with cdrecord -vvv -atip on an _NEC DVD_RW ND-4571A 1-01 and an Optiarc DVD RW AD-7200A 1.06 attached to an ASRock 990FX Extreme 4, running at UDMA/33.

The issue can be reproduced by running the same command with a cygwin build of cdrecord on WinXP, although it requires more attempts to cause it. The hang in that case is also resolved by forcing PIO. It doesn't appear that VIA has produced any drivers for that OS, thus no known workaround exists.

HDDs attached to the controller do not suffer from any DMA issues.

  • Published: Jul 10, 2025
  • Updated: Dec 17, 2025
  • CVE: CVE-2025-38336
  • 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

No CWE or OWASP classifications available.

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.