Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-40138)

Summary

Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-40138). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Mitigation: upgrade to 6.17.3 or later.

Original description

The description as published by the source.

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

f2fs: fix to avoid NULL pointer dereference in f2fs_check_quota_consistency()

syzbot reported a f2fs bug as below:

Oops: gen[ 107.736417][ T5848] Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000000: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN PTI
KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000000007]
CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 5848 Comm: syz-executor263 Tainted: G W 6.17.0-rc1-syzkaller-00014-g0e39a731820a #0 PREEMPT_{RT,(full)}
RIP: 0010:strcmp+0x3c/0xc0 lib/string.c:284
Call Trace:

f2fs_check_quota_consistency fs/f2fs/super.c:1188 [inline]
f2fs_check_opt_consistency+0x1378/0x2c10 fs/f2fs/super.c:1436
__f2fs_remount fs/f2fs/super.c:2653 [inline]
f2fs_reconfigure+0x482/0x1770 fs/f2fs/super.c:5297
reconfigure_super+0x224/0x890 fs/super.c:1077
do_remount fs/namespace.c:3314 [inline]
path_mount+0xd18/0xfe0 fs/namespace.c:4112
do_mount fs/namespace.c:4133 [inline]
__do_sys_mount fs/namespace.c:4344 [inline]
__se_sys_mount+0x317/0x410 fs/namespace.c:4321
do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:63 [inline]
do_syscall_64+0xfa/0x3b0 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:94
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f

The direct reason is f2fs_check_quota_consistency() may suffer null-ptr-deref
issue in strcmp().

The bug can be reproduced w/ below scripts:
mkfs.f2fs -f /dev/vdb
mount -t f2fs -o usrquota /dev/vdb /mnt/f2fs
quotacheck -uc /mnt/f2fs/
umount /mnt/f2fs
mount -t…

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-2025-40138 has been found in Kernel.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade Kernel to 6.17.3 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "Kernel CVE-2025-40138" on the vendor's site.

CVE-2025-40138 (Kernel)
Patched: 6.17.3 — 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 6.17.3.

🛡️ 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 6.17.3
```
ステージング環境で 6.17.3 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":"6.17.0"},{"fixed":"6.17.3"}]}]

Fix status by distribution

Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE

BellSoft Alpaquita BELL-CVE-2025-40138 linux-lts Fixed in: 6.18.35-r1
Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2025-40138 linux-hwe-edge