Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-38020)

Summary

Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-38020). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Mitigation: upgrade to 6.1.140, 6.6.92, 6.12.30, 6.14.8 or later.

Original description

The description as published by the source.

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

net/mlx5e: Disable MACsec offload for uplink representor profile

MACsec offload is not supported in switchdev mode for uplink
representors. When switching to the uplink representor profile, the
MACsec offload feature must be cleared from the netdevice's features.

If left enabled, attempts to add offloads result in a null pointer
dereference, as the uplink representor does not support MACsec offload
even though the feature bit remains set.

Clear NETIF_F_HW_MACSEC in mlx5e_fix_uplink_rep_features().

Kernel log:

Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc000000000f: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN
KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000078-0x000000000000007f]
CPU: 29 UID: 0 PID: 4714 Comm: ip Not tainted 6.14.0-rc4_for_upstream_debug_2025_03_02_17_35 #1
Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS rel-1.16.0-0-gd239552ce722-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014
RIP: 0010:__mutex_lock+0x128/0x1dd0
Code: d0 7c 08 84 d2 0f 85 ad 15 00 00 8b 35 91 5c fe 03 85 f6 75 29 49 8d 7e 60 48 b8 00 00 00 00 00 fc ff df 48 89 fa 48 c1 ea 03 <80> 3c 02 00 0f 85 a6 15 00 00 4d 3b 76 60 0f 85 fd 0b 00 00 65 ff
RSP: 0018:ffff888147a4f160 EFLAGS: 00010206
RAX: dffffc0000000000 RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: 0000000000000001
RDX: 000000000000000f RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: 0000000000000078
RBP: ffff888147a4f2e0 R08: ffffffffa05d2c19 R09: 0000000000000000
R10: 0000000000000001 R11: 0000000000000000 R1…

Source: OSV.dev (Open Source Vulnerabilities) NVD OSV

Auto-generated summary

Assembled by SecPulse from the source data (CVSS, CWE, affected versions) using templates — no AI involved. Check the original description and references below for exact details.

A vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-38020 has been found in Kernel.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade Kernel to 6.1.140, 6.6.92, 6.12.30, 6.14.8 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "Kernel CVE-2025-38020" on the vendor's site.

CVE-2025-38020 (Kernel)
Patched: 6.1.140, 6.6.92, 6.12.30, 6.14.8 — apply immediately
Plan: 1) Audit SBOM/dependencies, 2) Stage→prod upgrade, 3) Add WAF/proxy monitoring on affected endpoints, 4) Hunt IOCs in logs.
Refs: see the GHSA / vendor advisory / patched release linked on this page.

❓ What is the problem

A vulnerability (unclassified) exists in Kernel.

📍 Affected scope

Check the vendor advisory for the affected versions of Kernel.

🔥 Severity

Severity: ?. Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.

🔧 How to fix

Update to 6.1.140, 6.6.92, 6.12.30, 6.14.8.

🛡️ Workaround

Until the patch is applied: disable the affected feature, apply WAF rules, or restrict access via network ACLs.

🔍 Detection

Search webserver/proxy logs for unusual request patterns matching this CVE's known IOCs. Run grep -r 'Kernel' . against your dependency files (package-lock.json, requirements.txt, go.sum) to find affected services.

Response actions

Concrete steps and command examples for SOC/SRE teams to execute in order

1
Identify exposure identify
```
grep -r 'Kernel' . | grep -v node_modules
```
リポジトリと本番環境の依存ファイル (package-lock.json / requirements.txt / go.sum / Gemfile.lock 等) で Kernel を grep し、稼働しているサービス・バージョンを把握する。
2
Apply patch patch
```
Upgrade Kernel to 6.1.140, 6.6.92, 6.12.30, 6.14.8
```
ステージング環境で 6.1.140, 6.6.92, 6.12.30, 6.14.8 に上げて回帰テスト → 本番反映。回帰テストはアプリの主要ハッピーパスを含めること。
3
Post-deployment verification verify
```
Confirm patched version is live in production
```
パッチ適用後、ステージングで PoC または同等の悪用パターンを再現して脆弱性が閉じたことを確認。本番ではアクセスログ・WAF でアラート再発が無いか継続監視。

Affected packages

Linux Kernel

[{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.1.0"},{"fixed":"6.1.140"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.2.0"},{"fixed":"6.6.92"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.7.0"},{"fixed":"6.12.30"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.13.0"},{"fixed":"6.14.8"}]}]

Fix status by distribution

Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE

BellSoft Alpaquita BELL-CVE-2025-38020 linux-lts Fixed in: 6.1.140-r0
Debian DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38020 linux Fixed in: 6.1.140-1
Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38020 linux