IM
IronMonkey Threat Research

CVE-2025-38681 MEDIUM

Published: 2025-09-04 | Last Modified: 2026-07-14 | Status: Modified

Description

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.

CVSS Metrics

Base Score: 4.7 (MEDIUM)

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

Attack VectorLOCAL
Attack ComplexityHIGH
Privileges RequiredLOW
User InteractionNONE
ScopeUNCHANGED
Confidentiality ImpactNONE
Integrity ImpactNONE
Availability ImpactHIGH

Source: [email protected]

Type: Primary

Exploitability Score: 1.0

Impact Score: 3.6

Weaknesses

Source Type Description
[email protected] Primary
en CWE-362

Affected Products

Vendor Product Version Update Type
linux linux_kernel * <built-in method update of dict object at 0x702bdd7d7040> Operating System
linux linux_kernel * <built-in method update of dict object at 0x702bde535700> Operating System
linux linux_kernel * <built-in method update of dict object at 0x702bdd7d5900> Operating System
linux linux_kernel * <built-in method update of dict object at 0x702bde535900> Operating System
linux linux_kernel * <built-in method update of dict object at 0x702bdd7d7f80> Operating System
linux linux_kernel * <built-in method update of dict object at 0x702bdd7d4200> Operating System
linux linux_kernel * <built-in method update of dict object at 0x702bde534640> Operating System
debian debian_linux 11.0 <built-in method update of dict object at 0x702b83f2e5c0> Operating System

Affected Configurations

Operator: OR

Vulnerable CPE
Yes cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Yes cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Yes cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Yes cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Yes cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Yes cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Yes cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

Operator: OR

Vulnerable CPE
Yes cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:11.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References

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