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Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2025-38590 json

net/mlx5e: Remove skb secpath if xfrm state is not found

published last yr. modified 10d ago also EUVD-2025-27919

cvss
7.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 38%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

net/mlx5e: Remove skb secpath if xfrm state is not found

Hardware returns a unique identifier for a decrypted packet's xfrm state, this state is looked up in an xarray. However, the state might have been freed by the time of this lookup.

Currently, if the state is not found, only a counter is incremented. The secpath (sp) extension on the skb is not removed, resulting in sp->len becoming 0.

Subsequently, functions like __xfrm_policy_check() attempt to access fields such as xfrm_input_state(skb)->xso.type (which dereferences sp->xvec[sp->len - 1]) without first validating sp->len. This leads to a crash when dereferencing an invalid state pointer.

This patch prevents the crash by explicitly removing the secpath extension from the skb if the xfrm state is not found after hardware decryption. This ensures downstream functions do not operate on a zero-length secpath.

BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffffff000002c8 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 282e067 P4D 282e067 PUD 0 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP CPU: 12 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/12 Not tainted 6.15.0-rc7_for_upstream_min_debug_2025_05_27_22_44 #1 NONE Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS rel-1.13.0-0-gf21b5a4aeb02-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:__xfrm_policy_check+0x61a/0xa30 Code: b6 77 7f 83 e6 02 74 14 4d 8b af d8 00 00 00 41 0f b6 45 05 c1 e0 03 48 98 49 01 c5 41 8b 45 00 83 e8 01 48 98 49 8b 44 c5 10 <0f> b6 80 c8 02 00 00 83 e0 0c 3c 04 0f 84 0c 02 00 00 31 ff 80 fa RSP: 0018:ffff88885fb04918 EFLAGS: 00010297 RAX: ffffffff00000000 RBX: 0000000000000002 RCX: 0000000000000000 RDX: 0000000000000002 RSI: 0000000000000002 RDI: 0000000000000000 RBP: ffffffff8311af80 R08: 0000000000000020 R09: 00000000c2eda353 R10: ffff88812be2bbc8 R11: 000000001faab533 R12: ffff88885fb049c8 R13: ffff88812be2bbc8 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: ffff88811896ae00 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff8888dca82000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: ffffffff000002c8 CR3: 0000000243050002 CR4: 0000000000372eb0 DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 Call Trace: <IRQ> ? try_to_wake_up+0x108/0x4c0 ? udp4_lib_lookup2+0xbe/0x150 ? udp_lib_lport_inuse+0x100/0x100 ? __udp4_lib_lookup+0x2b0/0x410 __xfrm_policy_check2.constprop.0+0x11e/0x130 udp_queue_rcv_one_skb+0x1d/0x530 udp_unicast_rcv_skb+0x76/0x90 __udp4_lib_rcv+0xa64/0xe90 ip_protocol_deliver_rcu+0x20/0x130 ip_local_deliver_finish+0x75/0xa0 ip_local_deliver+0xc1/0xd0 ? ip_protocol_deliver_rcu+0x130/0x130 ip_sublist_rcv+0x1f9/0x240 ? ip_rcv_finish_core+0x430/0x430 ip_list_rcv+0xfc/0x130 __netif_receive_skb_list_core+0x181/0x1e0 netif_receive_skb_list_internal+0x200/0x360 ? mlx5e_build_rx_skb+0x1bc/0xda0 [mlx5_core] gro_receive_skb+0xfd/0x210 mlx5e_handle_rx_cqe_mpwrq+0x141/0x280 [mlx5_core] mlx5e_poll_rx_cq+0xcc/0x8e0 [mlx5_core] ? mlx5e_handle_rx_dim+0x91/0xd0 [mlx5_core] mlx5e_napi_poll+0x114/0xab0 [mlx5_core] __napi_poll+0x25/0x170 net_rx_action+0x32d/0x3a0 ? mlx5_eq_comp_int+0x8d/0x280 [mlx5_core] ? notifier_call_chain+0x33/0xa0 handle_softirqs+0xda/0x250 irq_exit_rcu+0x6d/0xc0 common_interrupt+0x81/0xa0 </IRQ>

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.191, 6.6.102, 6.12.42, 6.15.10, 6.16.1, 6.17
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.43-1
  • linux Debian 14 6.16.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38590

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-100.100
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1046.49
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1047.50
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1043.48
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1044.44
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1046.52
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1030.33
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1047.51

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38590

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-rt Linux Micro 6.2 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-64kb SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-source SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-default SLES 16.0, SLE High Availability Extension 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2 +1 more 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1.160000.2.7
  • kernel-syms SLES 16.0, Linux Micro Extras 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-azure SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-obs-qa SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:20555-1SUSE-SU-2026:20599-1SUSE-SU-2026:20615-1SUSE-SU-2026:20570-1SUSE-SU-2025:20870-1SUSE-SU-2025:20898-1

  • kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-azure openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1
  • kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.26.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:20287-1

  • kernel Azure Linux 3.0 6.6.104.2-1

azure linux advisories AZL-66452

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2025-38590 updated cvss 6.2

kernel: net/mlx5e: Remove skb secpath if xfrm state is not found

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “To mitigate this issue, prevent module mlx5_core from being loaded. Please see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/41278 for how to blacklist a kernel module to prevent it from loading automatically.”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.44% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 38% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-401 Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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