CVE Database›Document archive›CVE-2025-38595

CVE-2025-38595

kernel: xen: fix UAF in dmabuf_exp_from_pages()

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Severity

Unknown

Red Hat Product Security

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CVSS

Review impact separately from score.

Published · August 19, 2025

Updated · October 30, 2026

Description

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

xen: fix UAF in dmabuf_exp_from_pages()

[dma_buf_fd() fixes; no preferences regarding the tree it goes through - up to xen folks]

As soon as we'd inserted a file reference into descriptor table, another thread could close it. That's fine for the case when all we are doing is returning that descriptor to userland (it's a race, but it's a userland race and there's nothing the kernel can do about it). However, if we follow fd_install() with any kind of access to objects that would be destroyed on close (be it the struct file itself or anything destroyed by its ->release()), we have a UAF.

dma_buf_fd() is a combination of reserving a descriptor and fd_install(). gntdev dmabuf_exp_from_pages() calls it and then proceeds to access the objects destroyed on close - starting with gntdev_dmabuf itself.

Fix that by doing reserving descriptor before anything else and do fd_install() only when everything had been set up.

Statement

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not impacted by this vulnerability because the Xen grant device DMA-buf export functionality is not enabled or present in supported Red Hat kernels. In upstream kernels, a concurrent thread closing an exported descriptor could cause an untimely release of resources, leading to a use-after-free condition. Because the required driver configuration is omitted from standard enterprise distributions, systems remain protected against exploitation.

Mitigation

No mitigation is specified in collected source.

CVSS / CWE

CWE not specified