Bug 2381870 (CVE-2025-38349)
| Summary: | CVE-2025-38349 kernel: Linux kernel use-after-free in eventpoll | ||
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| Product: | [Other] Security Response | Reporter: | OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport> |
| Component: | vulnerability | Assignee: | Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev> |
| Status: | NEW --- | QA Contact: | |
| Severity: | medium | Docs Contact: | |
| Priority: | medium | ||
| Version: | unspecified | CC: | rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers |
| Target Milestone: | --- | Keywords: | Security |
| Target Release: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
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| Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | --- | |
| Doc Text: |
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.
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Story Points: | --- |
| Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
| Last Closed: | Type: | --- | |
| Regression: | --- | Mount Type: | --- |
| Documentation: | --- | CRM: | |
| Verified Versions: | Category: | --- | |
| oVirt Team: | --- | RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host: | |
| Cloudforms Team: | --- | Target Upstream Version: | |
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Upstream advisory: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2025071819-CVE-2025-38349-ee39@gregkh/T This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Via RHSA-2026:1143 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:1143 This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Via RHSA-2026:1690 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:1690 This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.6 Extended Update Support Via RHSA-2026:2759 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:2759 This issue has been addressed in the following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10.0 Extended Update Support Via RHSA-2026:4111 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:4111 |
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: eventpoll: don't decrement ep refcount while still holding the ep mutex Jann Horn points out that epoll is decrementing the ep refcount and then doing a mutex_unlock(&ep->mtx); afterwards. That's very wrong, because it can lead to a use-after-free. That pattern is actually fine for the very last reference, because the code in question will delay the actual call to "ep_free(ep)" until after it has unlocked the mutex. But it's wrong for the much subtler "next to last" case when somebody *else* may also be dropping their reference and free the ep while we're still using the mutex. Note that this is true even if that other user is also using the same ep mutex: mutexes, unlike spinlocks, can not be used for object ownership, even if they guarantee mutual exclusion. A mutex "unlock" operation is not atomic, and as one user is still accessing the mutex as part of unlocking it, another user can come in and get the now released mutex and free the data structure while the first user is still cleaning up. See our mutex documentation in Documentation/locking/mutex-design.rst, in particular the section [1] about semantics: "mutex_unlock() may access the mutex structure even after it has internally released the lock already - so it's not safe for another context to acquire the mutex and assume that the mutex_unlock() context is not using the structure anymore" So if we drop our ep ref before the mutex unlock, but we weren't the last one, we may then unlock the mutex, another user comes in, drops _their_ reference and releases the 'ep' as it now has no users - all while the mutex_unlock() is still accessing it. Fix this by simply moving the ep refcount dropping to outside the mutex: the refcount itself is atomic, and doesn't need mutex protection (that's the whole _point_ of refcounts: unlike mutexes, they are inherently about object lifetimes).