CVE-2025-38235: Linux Kernel

Medium severity, CVSS 5.5. EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: HID: appletb-kbd: fix "appletb_backlight" backlight device reference counting During appletb_kbd_probe, probe attempts to get the backlight device by name. When this happens backlight_device_get_by_name looks for a device in the backlight class which has name "appletb_backlight" and upon finding a match it increments the reference count for the device and returns it to the caller. However this reference is never released leading to a reference leak. Fix this by decrementing the backlight device reference count on removal via put_device and on probe failure.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 6.15, before 6.15.5 (fixed in 6.15.5); version 6.16 only

Published 2025-07-06. Last modified 2026-06-17.