CVE-2025-37949

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: <TASK> __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

Local issue in Xen guest kernel requiring privileged access. No remote vector or privilege escalation; only potential DoS via NULL dereference.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.