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Linux Kernel CVE-2025-38461

MEDIUM
Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition (CWE-367)
2025-07-25 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
Information Disclosure Linux Debian Red Hat Debian Linux Suse
4.7
CVSS 3.1 · NVD
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Severity by source

NVD PRIMARY
4.7 MEDIUM
AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
vuln.today AI
4.7 MEDIUM

Local-only access path, race condition timing requirement (AC:H), low-privilege user sufficient, kernel crash yields A:H with zero C/I impact.

3.1 AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
4.0 AV:L/AC:H/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
SUSE
MEDIUM
qualitative
Red Hat
7.3 MEDIUM
qualitative

Primary rating from NVD.

CVSS VectorNVD

Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
High
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

Lifecycle Timeline

2
Analysis Generated
Jul 30, 2026 - 08:48 vuln.today
CVE Published
Jul 25, 2025 - 16:15 nvd
MEDIUM 4.7

DescriptionNVD

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

vsock: Fix transport_* TOCTOU

Transport assignment may race with module unload. Protect new_transport from becoming a stale pointer.

This also takes care of an insecure call in vsock_use_local_transport(); add a lockdep assert.

BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: fffffbfff8056000 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN RIP: 0010:vsock_assign_transport+0x366/0x600 Call Trace: vsock_connect+0x59c/0xc40 __sys_connect+0xe8/0x100 __x64_sys_connect+0x6e/0xc0 do_syscall_64+0x92/0x1c0 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53

AnalysisAI

Kernel denial-of-service in the Linux vsock subsystem allows a local low-privileged user to crash the system by winning a race between transport assignment and module unload, causing a stale pointer dereference in vsock_assign_transport(). The impact is limited strictly to availability - a kernel panic/oops - with no confidentiality or integrity loss. No active exploitation has been confirmed (not in CISA KEV), and EPSS at 0.11% (2nd percentile) reflects the high attack complexity required to reliably win the race condition.

Technical ContextAI

The vsock (Virtual Socket) subsystem provides AF_VSOCK socket communication between guest VMs and hypervisors (e.g., QEMU/KVM, VMware). The flaw is a textbook CWE-367 TOCTOU race: during a vsock_connect() syscall, the kernel reads a transport pointer (new_transport) and then uses it - but between those two operations, a concurrent module unload can free the backing memory, leaving a stale pointer. The crash trace shows vsock_assign_transport+0x366/0x600 faulting on KASAN-flagged address fffffbfff8056000, confirming a use-after-free on a freed module struct. The fix adds proper locking around transport pointer access and a lockdep assertion in vsock_use_local_transport() to catch future lock ordering violations. CPE data (cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel) spans multiple stable branches and includes 6.16-rc1 through rc4.

RemediationAI

Apply the upstream stable-tree patches. Seven commits are available at the Linux kernel stable repository covering multiple branches: 36a439049b34cca0b3661276049b84a1f76cc21a, 687aa0c5581b8d4aa87fd92973e4ee576b550cdf, 7b73bddf54777fb62d4d8c7729d0affe6df04477, 8667e8d0eb46bc54fdae30ba2f4786407d3d88eb, 9ce53e744f18e73059d3124070e960f3aa9902bf, 9d24bb6780282b0255b9929abe5e8f98007e2c6e, and ae2c712ba39c7007de63cb0c75b51ce1caaf1da5 (all at https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/). Debian LTS users should apply the packages announced at https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/10/. Specific fixed distribution kernel versions are not confirmed in available data - consult your distribution's security tracker. As a compensating control where vsock is not required, unloading vsock transport kernel modules (e.g., vmw_vsock_virtio_transport, vmw_vsock_vmci_transport, vsock_loopback) eliminates the vulnerable code path entirely, though this disables VM-to-host communication for tools relying on vsock (e.g., VMware Tools, cloud-init over vsock, systemd-vmspawn).

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Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: Moderate
Product Status
Container suse/hpc/warewulf4-x86_64/sle-hpc-node:15.6.17.8.103 Image SLES15-SP6 Image SLES15-SP6-BYOS Image SLES15-SP6-BYOS-Azure Image SLES15-SP6-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES15-SP6-BYOS-GCE Image SLES15-SP6-CHOST-BYOS Image SLES15-SP6-CHOST-BYOS-Aliyun Image SLES15-SP6-CHOST-BYOS-Azure Image SLES15-SP6-CHOST-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES15-SP6-CHOST-BYOS-GCE Image SLES15-SP6-CHOST-BYOS-GDC Image SLES15-SP6-CHOST-BYOS-SAP-CCloud Image SLES15-SP6-EC2 Image SLES15-SP6-EC2-ECS-HVM Image SLES15-SP6-GCE Image SLES15-SP6-HPC-BYOS Image SLES15-SP6-HPC-BYOS-Azure Image SLES15-SP6-HPC-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES15-SP6-HPC-BYOS-GCE Image SLES15-SP6-HPC-EC2 Image SLES15-SP6-HPC-GCE Image SLES15-SP6-Hardened-BYOS Image SLES15-SP6-Hardened-BYOS-Azure Image SLES15-SP6-Hardened-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES15-SP6-Hardened-BYOS-GCE Image SLES15-SP6-SAP Image SLES15-SP6-SAP-Azure Image SLES15-SP6-SAP-EC2 Image SLES15-SP6-SAP-GCE Image SLES15-SP6-SAPCAL Image SLES15-SP6-SAPCAL-Azure Image SLES15-SP6-SAPCAL-EC2 Image SLES15-SP6-SAPCAL-GCE Affected
Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/base-os-container:2.1.3-7.44 Container suse/sl-micro/6.1/base-os-container:2.2.1-5.27 Image SL-Micro Image SL-Micro-Azure Image SL-Micro-BYOS-Azure Image SL-Micro-BYOS-EC2 Image SL-Micro-BYOS-GCE Image SL-Micro-EC2 Image SLE-Micro Image SLE-Micro-Azure Image SLE-Micro-BYOS Image SLE-Micro-BYOS-Azure Image SLE-Micro-BYOS-EC2 Image SLE-Micro-BYOS-GCE Image SLE-Micro-EC2 Image SLE-Micro-GCE Image SUSE-Multi-Linux-Manager-Proxy-BYOS-Azure Image SUSE-Multi-Linux-Manager-Proxy-BYOS-EC2 Image SUSE-Multi-Linux-Manager-Proxy-BYOS-GCE Image SUSE-Multi-Linux-Manager-Server-Azure-llc Image SUSE-Multi-Linux-Manager-Server-Azure-ltd Image SUSE-Multi-Linux-Manager-Server-BYOS-Azure Image SUSE-Multi-Linux-Manager-Server-BYOS-EC2 Image SUSE-Multi-Linux-Manager-Server-BYOS-GCE Image SUSE-Multi-Linux-Manager-Server-EC2-llc Image SUSE-Multi-Linux-Manager-Server-EC2-ltd Affected
Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/kvm-os-container:2.1.3-6.67 Container suse/sl-micro/6.1/kvm-os-container:2.2.1-5.29 Affected
Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/rt-os-container:2.1.3-7.76 Container suse/sl-micro/6.1/rt-os-container:2.2.1-5.14 Affected
Image SLES-Azure-3P Image SLES-Azure-Basic Image SLES-Azure-Standard Image SLES-BYOS-Azure Image SLES-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES-BYOS-GCE Image SLES-CHOST-BYOS-Aliyun Image SLES-CHOST-BYOS-Azure Image SLES-CHOST-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES-CHOST-BYOS-GCE Image SLES-CHOST-BYOS-GDC Image SLES-CHOST-BYOS-SAP-CCloud Image SLES-EC2 Image SLES-EC2-ECS Image SLES-GCE Image SLES-GCE-3P Image SLES-Hardened-BYOS-Azure Image SLES-Hardened-BYOS-EC2 Image SLES-Hardened-BYOS-GCE Image SLES-SAPCAL-Azure Image SLES-SAPCAL-EC2 Image SLES-SAPCAL-GCE Affected

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CVE-2025-38461 vulnerability details – vuln.today
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