CVE-2025-39737
mm/kmemleak: avoid soft lockup in __kmemleak_do_cleanup()
Severity Score
Exploit Likelihood
Affected Versions
Public Exploits
0Exploited in Wild
-Decision
Descriptions
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/kmemleak: avoid soft lockup in __kmemleak_do_cleanup() A soft lockup warning was observed on a relative small system x86-64
system with 16 GB of memory when running a debug kernel with kmemleak
enabled. watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#8 stuck for 33s! [kworker/8:1:134] The test system was running a workload with hot unplug happening in
parallel. Then kemleak decided to disable itself due to its inability to
allocate more kmemleak objects. The debug kernel has its
CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK_MEM_POOL_SIZE set to 40,000. The soft lockup happened in kmemleak_do_cleanup() when the existing
kmemleak objects were being removed and deleted one-by-one in a loop via a
workqueue. In this particular case, there are at least 40,000 objects
that need to be processed and given the slowness of a debug kernel and the
fact that a raw_spinlock has to be acquired and released in
__delete_object(), it could take a while to properly handle all these
objects. As kmemleak has been disabled in this case, the object removal and
deletion process can be further optimized as locking isn't really needed. However, it is probably not worth the effort to optimize for such an edge
case that should rarely happen. So the simple solution is to call
cond_resched() at periodic interval in the iteration loop to avoid soft
lockup.
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/kmemleak: avoid soft lockup in __kmemleak_do_cleanup() A soft lockup warning was observed on a relative small system x86-64 system with 16 GB of memory when running a debug kernel with kmemleak enabled. watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#8 stuck for 33s! [kworker/8:1:134] The test system was running a workload with hot unplug happening in parallel. Then kemleak decided to disable itself due to its inability to allocate more kmemleak objects. The debug kernel has its CONFIG_DEBUG_KMEMLEAK_MEM_POOL_SIZE set to 40,000. The soft lockup happened in kmemleak_do_cleanup() when the existing kmemleak objects were being removed and deleted one-by-one in a loop via a workqueue. In this particular case, there are at least 40,000 objects that need to be processed and given the slowness of a debug kernel and the fact that a raw_spinlock has to be acquired and released in __delete_object(), it could take a while to properly handle all these objects. As kmemleak has been disabled in this case, the object removal and deletion process can be further optimized as locking isn't really needed. However, it is probably not worth the effort to optimize for such an edge case that should rarely happen. So the simple solution is to call cond_resched() at periodic interval in the iteration loop to avoid soft lockup.
Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel that may lead to a privilege escalation, denial of service or information leaks. For the oldstable distribution (bookworm), these problems have been fixed in version 6.1.153-1.
CVSS Scores
SSVC
- Decision:-
Timeline
- 2025-04-16 CVE Reserved
- 2025-09-11 CVE Published
- 2025-11-03 CVE Updated
- 2025-11-18 EPSS Updated
- ---------- Exploited in Wild
- ---------- KEV Due Date
- ---------- First Exploit
CWE
CAPEC
References (9)
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Affected Vendors, Products, and Versions
| Vendor | Product | Version | Other | Status | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vendor | Product | Version | Other | Status | <-- --> | Vendor | Product | Version | Other | Status |
| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | < 5.4.297 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " < 5.4.297" | en |
Affected
| ||||||
| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | < 5.10.241 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " < 5.10.241" | en |
Affected
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| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | < 5.15.190 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " < 5.15.190" | en |
Affected
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| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | < 6.1.149 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " < 6.1.149" | en |
Affected
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| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | < 6.6.103 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " < 6.6.103" | en |
Affected
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| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | < 6.12.43 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " < 6.12.43" | en |
Affected
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| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | < 6.15.11 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " < 6.15.11" | en |
Affected
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| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | < 6.16.2 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " < 6.16.2" | en |
Affected
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| Linux Search vendor "Linux" | Linux Kernel Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" | < 6.17 Search vendor "Linux" for product "Linux Kernel" and version " < 6.17" | en |
Affected
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