CVE-2025-38681

Description

From CVE.org

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/ptdump: take the memory hotplug lock inside ptdump_walk_pgd() Memory hot remove unmaps and tears down various kernel page table regions as required. The ptdump code can race with concurrent modifications of the kernel page tables. When leaf entries are modified concurrently, the dump code may log stale or inconsistent information for a VA range, but this is otherwise not harmful. But when intermediate levels of kernel page table are freed, the dump code will continue to use memory that has been freed and potentially reallocated for another purpose. In such cases, the ptdump code may dereference bogus addresses, leading to a number of potential problems. To avoid the above mentioned race condition, platforms such as arm64, riscv and s390 take memory hotplug lock, while dumping kernel page table via the sysfs interface /sys/kernel/debug/kernel_page_tables. Similar race condition exists while checking for pages that might have been marked W+X via /sys/kernel/debug/kernel_page_tables/check_wx_pages which in turn calls ptdump_check_wx(). Instead of solving this race condition again, let's just move the memory hotplug lock inside generic ptdump_check_wx() which will benefit both the scenarios. Drop get_online_mems() and put_online_mems() combination from all existing platform ptdump code paths.

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).

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

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown

Red HatNVDcve.org
Base Score6.54.7N/A
Attack VectorLocalLocalN/A
Attack ComplexityHighHighN/A
Privileges RequiredLowLowN/A
User InteractionNoneNoneN/A
ScopeUnchangedUnchangedN/A
ConfidentialityHighNoneN/A
Integrity ImpactLowNoneN/A
Availability ImpactHighHighN/A

Vector

Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:H

NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Integrity,Other

Technical Impact: Alter Execution Logic; Unexpected State

The main problem is that -- if a lock is overcome -- data could be altered in a bad state.

Frequently Asked Questions

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