Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-38646)

Summary

Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-38646). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Mitigation: upgrade to 6.6.102, 6.12.42, 6.15.10, 6.16.1 or later.

Original description

The description as published by the source.

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

wifi: rtw89: avoid NULL dereference when RX problematic packet on unsupported 6 GHz band

With a quite rare chance, RX report might be problematic to make SW think
a packet is received on 6 GHz band even if the chip does not support 6 GHz
band actually. Since SW won't initialize stuffs for unsupported bands, NULL
dereference will happen then in the sequence, rtw89_vif_rx_stats_iter() ->
rtw89_core_cancel_6ghz_probe_tx(). So, add a check to avoid it.

The following is a crash log for this case.

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000032
#PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode
#PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page
PGD 0 P4D 0
Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI
CPU: 1 PID: 1907 Comm: irq/131-rtw89_p Tainted: G U 6.6.56-05896-g89f5fb0eb30b #1 (HASH:1400 4)
Hardware name: Google Telith/Telith, BIOS Google_Telith.15217.747.0 11/12/2024
RIP: 0010:rtw89_vif_rx_stats_iter+0xd2/0x310 [rtw89_core]
Code: 4c 89 7d c8 48 89 55 c0 49 8d 44 24 02 48 89 45 b8 45 31 ff eb 11
41 c6 45 3a 01 41 b7 01 4d 8b 6d 00 4d 39 f5 74 42 8b 43 10 <41> 33 45
32 0f b7 4b 14 66 41 33 4d 36 0f b7 c9 09 c1 74 d8 4d 85
RSP: 0018:ffff9f3080138ca0 EFLAGS: 00010246
RAX: 00000000b8bf5770 RBX: ffff91b5e8c639c0 RCX: 0000000000000011
RDX: ffff91b582de1be8 RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: ffff91b5e8c639e6
RBP: ffff9f3080138d00 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000
R10: ffff91b59de70000 R11: f…

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-2025-38646 has been found in Kernel.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade Kernel to 6.6.102, 6.12.42, 6.15.10, 6.16.1 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "Kernel CVE-2025-38646" on the vendor's site.

CVE-2025-38646 (Kernel)
Patched: 6.6.102, 6.12.42, 6.15.10, 6.16.1 — 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 6.6.102, 6.12.42, 6.15.10, 6.16.1.

🛡️ 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 6.6.102, 6.12.42, 6.15.10, 6.16.1
```
ステージング環境で 6.6.102, 6.12.42, 6.15.10, 6.16.1 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":"6.6.102"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.7.0"},{"fixed":"6.12.42"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.13.0"},{"fixed":"6.15.10"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.16.0"},{"fixed":"6.16.1"}]}]

Fix status by distribution

Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE

BellSoft Alpaquita BELL-CVE-2025-38646 linux-lts Fixed in: 6.12.44-r0
Debian DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38646 linux Fixed in: 6.12.43-1
Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38646 linux-hwe-edge