CVE-2025-38488 Affecting kernel-rt-debug package, versions *


Severity

Recommended
medium

Based on CentOS security rating.

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-CENTOS9-KERNELRTDEBUG-11181270
  • published29 Jul 2025
  • disclosed28 Jul 2025

Introduced: 28 Jul 2025

NewCVE-2025-38488  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

There is no fixed version for Centos:9 kernel-rt-debug.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-rt-debug package and not the kernel-rt-debug package as distributed by Centos. See How to fix? for Centos:9 relevant fixed versions and status.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

smb: client: fix use-after-free in crypt_message when using async crypto

The CVE-2024-50047 fix removed asynchronous crypto handling from crypt_message(), assuming all crypto operations are synchronous. However, when hardware crypto accelerators are used, this can cause use-after-free crashes:

crypt_message() // Allocate the creq buffer containing the req creq = smb2_get_aead_req(..., &req);

// Async encryption returns -EINPROGRESS immediately
rc = enc ? crypto_aead_encrypt(req) : crypto_aead_decrypt(req);

// Free creq while async operation is still in progress kvfree_sensitive(creq, ...);

Hardware crypto modules often implement async AEAD operations for performance. When crypto_aead_encrypt/decrypt() returns -EINPROGRESS, the operation completes asynchronously. Without crypto_wait_req(), the function immediately frees the request buffer, leading to crashes when the driver later accesses the freed memory.

This results in a use-after-free condition when the hardware crypto driver later accesses the freed request structure, leading to kernel crashes with NULL pointer dereferences.

The issue occurs because crypto_alloc_aead() with mask=0 doesn't guarantee synchronous operation. Even without CRYPTO_ALG_ASYNC in the mask, async implementations can be selected.

Fix by restoring the async crypto handling:

  • DECLARE_CRYPTO_WAIT(wait) for completion tracking
  • aead_request_set_callback() for async completion notification
  • crypto_wait_req() to wait for operation completion

This ensures the request buffer isn't freed until the crypto operation completes, whether synchronous or asynchronous, while preserving the CVE-2024-50047 fix.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1