Description

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

xenbus: Use kref to track req lifetime

Marek reported seeing a NULL pointer fault in the xenbus_thread
callstack:
BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000000
RIP: e030:__wake_up_common+0x4c/0x180
Call Trace:

__wake_up_common_lock+0x82/0xd0
process_msg+0x18e/0x2f0
xenbus_thread+0x165/0x1c0

process_msg+0x18e is req->cb(req). req->cb is set to xs_wake_up(), a
thin wrapper around wake_up(), or xenbus_dev_queue_reply(). It seems
like it was xs_wake_up() in this case.

It seems like req may have woken up the xs_wait_for_reply(), which
kfree()ed the req. When xenbus_thread resumes, it faults on the zero-ed
data.

Linux Device Drivers 2nd edition states:
"Normally, a wake_up call can cause an immediate reschedule to happen,
meaning that other processes might run before wake_up returns."
... which would match the behaviour observed.

Change to keeping two krefs on each request. One for the caller, and
one for xenbus_thread. Each will kref_put() when finished, and the last
will free it.

This use of kref matches the description in
Documentation/core-api/kref.rst

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2025-37949

Affected Products

Vendor: Linux

Product: Linux

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.06% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 17.55% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-06-18 (when was this score calculated)

References

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-37949
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/4d260a5558df4650eb87bc41b2c9ac2d6b2ba447
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8b02f85e84dc6f7c150cef40ddb69af5a25659e5
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cbfaf46b88a4c01b64c4186cdccd766c19ae644c
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8e9c8a0393b5f85f1820c565ab8105660f4e8f92
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2466b0f66795c3c426cacc8998499f38031dbb59
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1f0304dfd9d217c2f8b04a9ef4b3258a66eedd27

Timeline