A race condition between the periodic PHC time caching worker in the iavf driver and the adapter reset or disable routines can cause a use‑after‑free. When the worker faults while the adapter is being torn down, it dereferences freed memory, leading to a kernel panic and a system crash. The resulting loss of service is a local denial of service that affects any process or user that relies on the affected network interface.

The vulnerability affects all Linux kernel builds that include the iavf driver before the commit that introduced the fix (commit 7c01dbf). It applies to all Linux kernel vendors, regardless of distribution. No specific version range is listed; the issue is present in any kernel that incorporates the unpatched code.

The vulnerability has a CVSS score of 7.0 and no publicly available EPSS score. It is not listed in CISA's KEV catalog. The exploit requires local privilege access to trigger an adapter reset or disable operation, which is an inferred prerequisite. Without such access, an attacker cannot easily trigger the crash. Based on the available data, the risk is considered low to moderate, but the denial of service impact warrants timely remediation.