Race Condition Affecting perf package, versions <1:6.1.147-172.266.amzn2023


Severity

Recommended
high

Based on Amazon Linux security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.04% (10th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-AMZN2023-PERF-13558272
  • published16 Oct 2025
  • disclosed16 Aug 2025

Introduced: 16 Aug 2025

CVE-2025-38539  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-362  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade Amazon-Linux:2023 perf to version 1:6.1.147-172.266.amzn2023 or higher.
This issue was patched in ALAS2023-2025-1144.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream perf package and not the perf package as distributed by Amazon-Linux. See How to fix? for Amazon-Linux:2023 relevant fixed versions and status.

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.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1