NULL Pointer Dereference Affecting torvalds/linux package, versions [5.9,6.1.191)[6.2,6.6.102)[6.7,6.12.42)[6.13,6.15.10)[6.16,6.16.1)


Severity

Recommended
0.0
high
0
10

CVSS assessment by Snyk's Security Team. Learn more

Threat Intelligence

EPSS
0.44% (39th percentile)

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  • Snyk IDSNYK-UNMANAGED-TORVALDSLINUX-20699884
  • published10 Oct 2026
  • disclosed19 Aug 2025
  • creditUnknown

Introduced: 19 Aug 2025

CVE-2025-38590  (opens in a new tab)
CWE-476  (opens in a new tab)

How to fix?

Upgrade torvalds/linux to version 6.1.191, 6.6.102, 6.12.42, 6.15.10, 6.16.1 or higher.

Overview

Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to NULL Pointer Dereference in the __xfrm_policy_check process. An attacker can cause a kernel crash and system denial of service by sending specially crafted network packets that trigger a race condition during IPsec Security Association teardown, leading to a NULL pointer dereference in kernel space.

Note: The Linux kernel project assigns a CVE to every bug fix it ships, whether or not the bug has been shown to be exploitable. This advisory was generated from that process and has not been individually assessed for exploitability. See the kernel's CVE process documentation: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/Documentation/process/cve.rst

CVSS Base Scores

version 4.0
version 3.1