Bug 2388919 (CVE-2025-38539)

Summary: CVE-2025-38539 kernel: tracing: Add down_write(trace_event_sem) when adding trace event
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: ---
Doc Text:
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:
Embargoed:

Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-08-16 12:01:20 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

tracing: Add down_write(trace_event_sem) when adding trace event

When a module is loaded, it adds trace events defined by the module. It
may also need to modify the modules trace printk formats to replace enum
names with their values.

If two modules are loaded at the same time, the adding of the event to the
ftrace_events list can corrupt the walking of the list in the code that is
modifying the printk format strings and crash the kernel.

The addition of the event should take the trace_event_sem for write while
it adds the new event.

Also add a lockdep_assert_held() on that semaphore in
__trace_add_event_dirs() as it iterates the list.