CVE Catalog

CVE-2025-38539

HighCVSS 7.8
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.17%

6th percentile - higher than 6% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel tracing subsystem, when adding trace events by a module, a write lock on the trace_event_sem semaphore was missing. When two modules are loaded simultaneously, this can corrupt the ftrace_events list and crash the kernel.

Risk Assessment

The vulnerability can lead to kernel crashes during concurrent module loading, potentially exploitable for system destabilization.

Recommendation

Apply the Linux kernel patch that adds down_write(trace_event_sem) when adding a trace event and lockdep_assert_held() in __trace_add_event_dirs().

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

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.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS