CVE-2025-21894

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's ENETC network driver. When a user requests one-step hardware timestamping on an Ethernet Virtual Function (VF), the driver attempts to access hardware registers restricted to the primary Physical Function (PF). A local user can exploit this vulnerability to trigger an invalid memory access, causing a kernel crash and resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS).

This vulnerability is rated as Moderate for Red Hat Enterprise Linux because exploitation is confined to a local denial of service via a kernel panic, without allowing privilege escalation or data confidentiality loss. The flaw specifically affects environments configured with specialized NXP/Freescale ENETC ethernet virtual functions when one-step hardware timestamping is requested. Standard systems lacking this specific hardware architecture or not utilizing virtual network functions for hardware timestamping are not exposed, and the vulnerable code is not present in RHEL 8 and 9.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.