CVE-2025-38523 Affecting kernel package, versions *


Severity

Recommended
medium

Based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.02% (3rd percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-RHEL10-KERNEL-12012182
  • published19 Aug 2025
  • disclosed16 Aug 2025

Introduced: 16 Aug 2025

NewCVE-2025-38523  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

There is no fixed version for RHEL:10 kernel.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel package and not the kernel package as distributed by RHEL. See How to fix? for RHEL:10 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

cifs: Fix the smbd_response slab to allow usercopy

The handling of received data in the smbdirect client code involves using copy_to_iter() to copy data from the smbd_reponse struct's packet trailer to a folioq buffer provided by netfslib that encapsulates a chunk of pagecache.

If, however, CONFIG_HARDENED_USERCOPY=y, this will result in the checks then performed in copy_to_iter() oopsing with something like the following:

CIFS: Attempting to mount //172.31.9.1/test CIFS: VFS: RDMA transport established usercopy: Kernel memory exposure attempt detected from SLUB object 'smbd_response_0000000091e24ea1' (offset 81, size 63)! ------------[ cut here ]------------ kernel BUG at mm/usercopy.c:102! ... RIP: 0010:usercopy_abort+0x6c/0x80 ... Call Trace: <TASK> __check_heap_object+0xe3/0x120 __check_object_size+0x4dc/0x6d0 smbd_recv+0x77f/0xfe0 [cifs] cifs_readv_from_socket+0x276/0x8f0 [cifs] cifs_read_from_socket+0xcd/0x120 [cifs] cifs_demultiplex_thread+0x7e9/0x2d50 [cifs] kthread+0x396/0x830 ret_from_fork+0x2b8/0x3b0 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30

The problem is that the smbd_response slab's packet field isn't marked as being permitted for usercopy.

Fix this by passing parameters to kmem_slab_create() to indicate that copy_to_iter() is permitted from the packet region of the smbd_response slab objects, less the header space.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1