Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-38255)

Summary

Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-38255). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Mitigation: upgrade to 6.6.96, 6.12.36, 6.15.5 or later.

Original description

The description as published by the source.

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

lib/group_cpus: fix NULL pointer dereference from group_cpus_evenly()

While testing null_blk with configfs, echo 0 > poll_queues will trigger
following panic:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000010
Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI
CPU: 27 UID: 0 PID: 920 Comm: bash Not tainted 6.15.0-02023-gadbdb95c8696-dirty #1238 PREEMPT(undef)
Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.1-2.fc37 04/01/2014
RIP: 0010:__bitmap_or+0x48/0x70
Call Trace:

__group_cpus_evenly+0x822/0x8c0
group_cpus_evenly+0x2d9/0x490
blk_mq_map_queues+0x1e/0x110
null_map_queues+0xc9/0x170 [null_blk]
blk_mq_update_queue_map+0xdb/0x160
blk_mq_update_nr_hw_queues+0x22b/0x560
nullb_update_nr_hw_queues+0x71/0xf0 [null_blk]
nullb_device_poll_queues_store+0xa4/0x130 [null_blk]
configfs_write_iter+0x109/0x1d0
vfs_write+0x26e/0x6f0
ksys_write+0x79/0x180
__x64_sys_write+0x1d/0x30
x64_sys_call+0x45c4/0x45f0
do_syscall_64+0xa5/0x240
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e

Root cause is that numgrps is set to 0, and ZERO_SIZE_PTR is returned from
kcalloc(), and later ZERO_SIZE_PTR will be deferenced.

Fix the problem by checking numgrps first in group_cpus_evenly(), and
return NULL directly if numgrps is zero.

[yukuai3@huawei.com: also fix the non-SMP version]

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-2025-38255 has been found in Kernel.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade Kernel to 6.6.96, 6.12.36, 6.15.5 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "Kernel CVE-2025-38255" on the vendor's site.

CVE-2025-38255 (Kernel)
Patched: 6.6.96, 6.12.36, 6.15.5 — 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 6.6.96, 6.12.36, 6.15.5.

🛡️ 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 6.6.96, 6.12.36, 6.15.5
```
ステージング環境で 6.6.96, 6.12.36, 6.15.5 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":"6.3.0"},{"fixed":"6.6.96"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.7.0"},{"fixed":"6.12.36"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.13.0"},{"fixed":"6.15.5"}]}]

Fix status by distribution

Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE

BellSoft Alpaquita BELL-CVE-2025-38255 linux-lts Fixed in: 6.12.41-r0
Debian DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38255 linux Fixed in: 6.12.37-1
Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38255 linux-hwe-edge