CVE-2025-38616 Affecting kernel-default-vdso package, versions <6.12.0-160000.6.1


Severity

Recommended
0.0
high
0
10

Based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server security rating.

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.03% (9th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-SLES1600-KERNELDEFAULTVDSO-13937010
  • published13 Nov 2025
  • disclosed6 Nov 2025

Introduced: 6 Nov 2025

NewCVE-2025-38616  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade SLES:16.0.0 kernel-default-vdso to version 6.12.0-160000.6.1 or higher.

NVD Description

Note: Versions mentioned in the description apply only to the upstream kernel-default-vdso package and not the kernel-default-vdso package as distributed by SLES. See How to fix? for SLES:16.0.0 relevant fixed versions and status.

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

tls: handle data disappearing from under the TLS ULP

TLS expects that it owns the receive queue of the TCP socket. This cannot be guaranteed in case the reader of the TCP socket entered before the TLS ULP was installed, or uses some non-standard read API (eg. zerocopy ones). Replace the WARN_ON() and a buggy early exit (which leaves anchor pointing to a freed skb) with real error handling. Wipe the parsing state and tell the reader to retry.

We already reload the anchor every time we (re)acquire the socket lock, so the only condition we need to avoid is an out of bounds read (not having enough bytes in the socket for previously parsed record len).

If some data was read from under TLS but there's enough in the queue we'll reload and decrypt what is most likely not a valid TLS record. Leading to some undefined behavior from TLS perspective (corrupting a stream? missing an alert? missing an attack?) but no kernel crash should take place.

CVSS Base Scores

version 3.1