Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-38517)

Summary

Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-38517). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Mitigation: upgrade to 6.12.39, 6.15.7 or later.

Original description

The description as published by the source.

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

lib/alloc_tag: do not acquire non-existent lock in alloc_tag_top_users()

alloc_tag_top_users() attempts to lock alloc_tag_cttype->mod_lock even
when the alloc_tag_cttype is not allocated because:

alloc tagging is disabled because mem profiling is disabled
(!alloc_tag_cttype)
alloc tagging is enabled, but not yet initialized (!alloc_tag_cttype)
alloc tagging is enabled, but failed initialization
(!alloc_tag_cttype or IS_ERR(alloc_tag_cttype))

In all cases, alloc_tag_cttype is not allocated, and therefore
alloc_tag_top_users() should not attempt to acquire the semaphore.

This leads to a crash on memory allocation failure by attempting to
acquire a non-existent semaphore:

Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc000000001b: 0000 [#3] SMP KASAN NOPTI
KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x00000000000000d8-0x00000000000000df]
CPU: 2 UID: 0 PID: 1 Comm: systemd Tainted: G D 6.16.0-rc2 #1 VOLUNTARY
Tainted: [D]=DIE
Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.2-debian-1.16.2-1 04/01/2014
RIP: 0010:down_read_trylock+0xaa/0x3b0
Code: d0 7c 08 84 d2 0f 85 a0 02 00 00 8b 0d df 31 dd 04 85 c9 75 29 48 b8 00 00 00 00 00 fc ff df 48 8d 6b 68 48 89 ea 48 c1 ea 03 <80> 3c 02 00 0f 85 88 02 00 00 48 3b 5b 68 0f 85 53 01 00 00 65 ff
RSP: 0000:ffff8881002ce9b8 EFLAGS: 00010016
RAX: dffffc0000000000 RBX: 00000000000…

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-2025-38517 has been found in Kernel.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade Kernel to 6.12.39, 6.15.7 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "Kernel CVE-2025-38517" on the vendor's site.

CVE-2025-38517 (Kernel)
Patched: 6.12.39, 6.15.7 — 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 6.12.39, 6.15.7.

🛡️ 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 6.12.39, 6.15.7
```
ステージング環境で 6.12.39, 6.15.7 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":"6.10.0"},{"fixed":"6.12.39"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.13.0"},{"fixed":"6.15.7"}]}]

Fix status by distribution

Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE

BellSoft Alpaquita BELL-CVE-2025-38517 linux-lts Fixed in: 6.12.41-r0
Debian DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38517 linux Fixed in: 6.12.41-1
Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38517 linux-hwe-edge