Executive brief
A vulnerability in the Linux kernel's I2C driver for i.MX processors can cause a system crash. The issue occurs during power management transitions when the system incorrectly disables hardware clocks before confirming the device's power state. This leads to a kernel panic or crash when the system later tries to access the hardware, potentially causing a denial of service.
Technical details
A race condition or logic error exists in the i2c-imx driver's runtime PM implementation. In i2c_imx_runtime_suspend(), the driver was disabling the clock before calling pinctrl_pm_select_sleep_state(). If the pinctrl transition failed, the suspend operation would abort, but the clock remained disabled. Subsequent hardware access while the clock was off resulted in a system crash. The fix reorders these operations to ensure the clock remains enabled if the pinctrl transition fails and adds error handling to i2c_imx_runtime_resume() to maintain state consistency.
Affected products
- Linux Linux Kernel 6.14 to 7.1
Timeline
- 2026-05-21: other: Patch submitted by developer
- 2026-06-08: patched: Patch committed to stable tree
- 2026-07-01: advisory: CVE published