CVE-2025-38349
Description
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's eventpoll (epoll) mechanism. A local attacker could exploit a use-after-free vulnerability due to incorrect handling of the 'ep' refcount while the 'ep' mutex is still held. This can lead to memory corruption, potentially allowing the attacker to achieve privilege escalation or execute arbitrary code on the system.
Statement
This vulnerability is rated as Moderate severity because exploitation requires authenticated local access and winning a tight timing race condition between concurrent cleanup threads, precluding direct remote attacks. Although the epoll facility is built directly into the kernel and available to all unprivileged processes across standard Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployments, triggering the underlying memory corruption requires specific concurrent reference-dropping operations. Consequently, while local privilege escalation or system crashes are theoretically possible, the high attack complexity constrains the overall risk.
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 7 | 7.8 | 7.8 |
| Attack Vector | Local | Local | Local |
| Attack Complexity | High | Low | Low |
| Privileges Required | Low | Low | Low |
| User Interaction | None | None | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | Unchanged | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | High | High | High |
| Integrity Impact | High | High | High |
| Availability Impact | High | High | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
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