CVE-2025-37949

CVE Details

Release Date:	2025-05-20
Impact:	Moderate	What is this?

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xenbus: Use kref to track req lifetime Marek reported seeing a NULL pointer fault in the xenbus_thread callstack: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000000 RIP: e030:__wake_up_common+0x4c/0x180 Call Trace: __wake_up_common_lock+0x82/0xd0 process_msg+0x18e/0x2f0 xenbus_thread+0x165/0x1c0 process_msg+0x18e is req->cb(req). req->cb is set to xs_wake_up(), a thin wrapper around wake_up(), or xenbus_dev_queue_reply(). It seems like it was xs_wake_up() in this case. It seems like req may have woken up the xs_wait_for_reply(), which kfree()ed the req. When xenbus_thread resumes, it faults on the zero-ed data. Linux Device Drivers 2nd edition states: "Normally, a wake_up call can cause an immediate reschedule to happen, meaning that other processes might run before wake_up returns." ... which would match the behaviour observed. Change to keeping two krefs on each request. One for the caller, and one for xenbus_thread. Each will kref_put() when finished, and the last will free it. This use of kref matches the description in Documentation/core-api/kref.rst

See more information about CVE-2025-37949 from MITRE CVE dictionary and NIST NVD

NOTE: The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 metrics

Base Score:	4.1
Vector String:	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Version:	3.1
Attack Vector:	Local
Attack Complexity:	High
Privileges Required:	High
User Interaction:	None
Scope:	Unchanged
Confidentiality Impact:	None
Integrity Impact:	None
Availability Impact:	High

Errata information

Platform	Errata	Release Date
Oracle Linux version 8 (kernel-uek)	ELSA-2025-20470	2025-07-14
Oracle Linux version 9 (kernel-uek)	ELSA-2025-20470	2025-07-14