CVE-2025-39838
kernel: cifs: prevent NULL pointer dereference in UTF16 conversion
Severity
ModerateRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · September 19, 2025
Updated · June 30, 2026
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
cifs: prevent NULL pointer dereference in UTF16 conversion
There can be a NULL pointer dereference bug here. NULL is passed to __cifs_sfu_make_node without checks, which passes it unchecked to cifs_strndup_to_utf16, which in turn passes it to cifs_local_to_utf16_bytes where '*from' is dereferenced, causing a crash.
This patch adds a check for NULL 'src' in cifs_strndup_to_utf16 and returns NULL early to prevent dereferencing NULL pointer.
Found by Linux Verification Center (linuxtesting.org) with SVACE
CVSS score applicability
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.
Mitigation
No mitigation is specified in collected source.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 3.1 · 5.5CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE-476 · NULL Pointer Dereference