CVE-2025-38378 — HID: appletb-kbd: fix slab use-after-free bug in appletb_kbd_probe

Affected: Linux

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

HID: appletb-kbd: fix slab use-after-free bug in appletb_kbd_probe

In probe appletb_kbd_probe() a "struct appletb_kbd *kbd" is allocated via devm_kzalloc() to store touch bar keyboard related data. Later on if backlight_device_get_by_name() finds a backlight device with name "appletb_backlight" a timer (kbd->inactivity_timer) is setup with appletb_inactivity_timer() and the timer is armed to run after appletb_tb_dim_timeout (60) seconds.

A use-after-free is triggered when failure occurs after the timer is armed. This ultimately means probe failure occurs and as a result the "struct appletb_kbd *kbd" which is device managed memory is freed. After 60 seconds the timer will have expired and __run_timers will attempt to access the timer (kbd->inactivity_timer) however the kdb structure has been freed causing a use-after free.

[ 71.636938] ================================================================== [ 71.637915] BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in __run_timers+0x7ad/0x890 [ 71.637915] Write of size 8 at addr ffff8881178c5958 by task swapper/1/0 [ 71.637915] [ 71.637915] CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/1 Not tainted 6.16.0-rc2-00318-g739a6c93cc75-dirty #12 PREEMPT(voluntary) [ 71.637915] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.2-debian-1.16.2-1 04/01/2014 [ 71.637915] Call Trace: [ 71.637915] <IRQ> [ 71.637915] dump_stack_lvl+0x53/0x70 [ 71.637915] print_…

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CVE-2025-38378 — HID: appletb-kbd: fix slab use-after-free bug in appletb_kbd_probe