Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-38496)

Summary

Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-38496). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Mitigation: upgrade to 6.6.100, 6.12.40, 6.15.8 or later.

Original description

The description as published by the source.

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

dm-bufio: fix sched in atomic context

If "try_verify_in_tasklet" is set for dm-verity, DM_BUFIO_CLIENT_NO_SLEEP
is enabled for dm-bufio. However, when bufio tries to evict buffers, there
is a chance to trigger scheduling in spin_lock_bh, the following warning
is hit:

BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at drivers/md/dm-bufio.c:2745
in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 0, non_block: 0, pid: 123, name: kworker/2:2
preempt_count: 201, expected: 0
RCU nest depth: 0, expected: 0
4 locks held by kworker/2:2/123:
#0: ffff88800a2d1548 ((wq_completion)dm_bufio_cache){....}-{0:0}, at: process_one_work+0xe46/0x1970
#1: ffffc90000d97d20 ((work_completion)(&dm_bufio_replacement_work)){....}-{0:0}, at: process_one_work+0x763/0x1970
#2: ffffffff8555b528 (dm_bufio_clients_lock){....}-{3:3}, at: do_global_cleanup+0x1ce/0x710
#3: ffff88801d5820b8 (&c->spinlock){....}-{2:2}, at: do_global_cleanup+0x2a5/0x710
Preemption disabled at:
[<0000000000000000>] 0x0
CPU: 2 UID: 0 PID: 123 Comm: kworker/2:2 Not tainted 6.16.0-rc3-g90548c634bd0 #305 PREEMPT(voluntary)
Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.16.3-0-ga6ed6b701f0a-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014
Workqueue: dm_bufio_cache do_global_cleanup
Call Trace:

dump_stack_lvl+0x53/0x70
__might_resched+0x360/0x4e0
do_global_cleanup+0x2f5/0x710
process_one_work+0x7db/0x1970
worker_thread+0x518/0xea0
kthread+0x359/0x690
ret_from_fork+0xf3/0…

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-2025-38496 has been found in Kernel.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade Kernel to 6.6.100, 6.12.40, 6.15.8 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "Kernel CVE-2025-38496" on the vendor's site.

CVE-2025-38496 (Kernel)
Patched: 6.6.100, 6.12.40, 6.15.8 — 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 6.6.100, 6.12.40, 6.15.8.

🛡️ 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 6.6.100, 6.12.40, 6.15.8
```
ステージング環境で 6.6.100, 6.12.40, 6.15.8 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":"6.4.0"},{"fixed":"6.6.100"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.7.0"},{"fixed":"6.12.40"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.13.0"},{"fixed":"6.15.8"}]}]

Fix status by distribution

Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE

BellSoft Alpaquita BELL-CVE-2025-38496 linux-lts Fixed in: 6.12.41-r0
Debian DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38496 linux Fixed in: 6.12.41-1
Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38496 linux-hwe-edge