CVE-2025-38616

CVE Details

Release Date:	2025-08-22
Impact:	Moderate	What is this?

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tls: handle data disappearing from under the TLS ULP TLS expects that it owns the receive queue of the TCP socket. This cannot be guaranteed in case the reader of the TCP socket entered before the TLS ULP was installed, or uses some non-standard read API (eg. zerocopy ones). Replace the WARN_ON() and a buggy early exit (which leaves anchor pointing to a freed skb) with real error handling. Wipe the parsing state and tell the reader to retry. We already reload the anchor every time we (re)acquire the socket lock, so the only condition we need to avoid is an out of bounds read (not having enough bytes in the socket for previously parsed record len). If some data was read from under TLS but there's enough in the queue we'll reload and decrypt what is most likely not a valid TLS record. Leading to some undefined behavior from TLS perspective (corrupting a stream? missing an alert? missing an attack?) but no kernel crash should take place.

See more information about CVE-2025-38616 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 10 (kernel-uek)	ELSA-2025-20662	2025-10-14
Oracle Linux version 9 (kernel-uek)	ELSA-2025-20662	2025-10-14