CVE-2025-21943 — gpio: aggregator: protect driver attr handlers against module unload

Affected: Linux

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

gpio: aggregator: protect driver attr handlers against module unload

Both new_device_store and delete_device_store touch module global resources (e.g. gpio_aggregator_lock). To prevent race conditions with module unload, a reference needs to be held.

Add try_module_get() in these handlers.

For new_device_store, this eliminates what appears to be the most dangerous scenario: if an id is allocated from gpio_aggregator_idr but platform_device_register has not yet been called or completed, a concurrent module unload could fail to unregister/delete the device, leaving behind a dangling platform device/GPIO forwarder. This can result in various issues. The following simple reproducer demonstrates these problems:

#!/bin/bash while :; do # note: whether 'gpiochip0 0' exists or not does not matter. echo 'gpiochip0 0' > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/gpio-aggregator/new_device done & while :; do modprobe gpio-aggregator modprobe -r gpio-aggregator done & wait

Starting with the following warning, several kinds of warnings will appear and the system may become unstable:

------------[ cut here ]------------ list_del corruption, ffff888103e2e980->next is LIST_POISON1 (dead000000000100) WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 1327 at lib/list_debug.c:56 __list_del_entry_valid_or_report+0xa3/0x120 [...] RIP: 0010:__list_del_entry_valid_or_report+0xa3/0x120 [...] Call Trace: <TASK> ? __list…

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CVE-2025-21943 — gpio: aggregator: protect driver attr handlers against module unload