HighCVE-2025-38502

    Linux Kernel: Out-of-Bounds Access (CVE-2025-38502)

    Published Last modified Sources: Debian, Siemens ProductCERT, Debian LTS, BSI, CVE.org, Msrc Update Guide, EUVD

    What is affected, what to do

    In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Fix oob access in cgroup local storage Lonial reported that an out-of-bounds access in cgroup local storage can be crafted via tail calls. Given two programs each utilizing a cgroup local storage with a different value size, and one program doing a tail call into the other.

    An exploit is publicly available. Update Linux Kernel to version 5.15.192, Linux Kernel to version 6.1.151, Linux Kernel to version 6.6.105.

    Affected
    • Linux Kernel lt 5.9..5.15.192
    • Linux Kernel lt 5.16..6.1.151
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.2..6.6.105
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.7..6.12.46
    • Linux Kernel lt 6.13..6.16.1
    Fixed in
    • Linux Kernel 5.15.192
    • Linux Kernel 6.1.151
    • Linux Kernel 6.6.105
    • Linux Kernel 6.12.46
    • Linux Kernel 6.16.1
    • Linux Kernel 6.17

    Not sure whether and how you are affected? Ask a question about this vulnerability

    Metrics

    7.8

    Priority

    XIEM Effective CVSS: highest available CVSS rating from NVD and vendor data.

    Source: Vendor (CNA), CVSS v3

    7.8

    CVSS v3

    Severity High on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: Debian, Siemens ProductCERT, Debian LTS, BSI, CVE.org, Msrc Update Guide, EUVD

    0.2 %

    EPSS score

    Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 7.3

    Show all metrics
    Severity
    High
    Priority (0–325)

    The priority score is a consolidated metric that condenses several individual signals into a single, action-guiding ranking: technical severity (CVSS), exploitation likelihood (EPSS), known-exploited status (KEV) and the context of the affected asset. The aim is to answer the only truly important question in vulnerability management: what first?

    Read in glossary
    49.83 Methodology
    Exploit maturity

    An exploit is code or a technique that specifically uses a concrete vulnerability to force unintended behaviour — such as executing code or escalating privileges. It is the tool that turns a theoretical flaw into a practical attack.

    Read in glossary
    PoC (publicly reported)
    XIEM Effective CVSS

    XIEM® is the tiered managed-security operating model from NEOSEC and a registered trademark of NEOSEC GmbH. It extends classic SIEM — the central collection, normalisation and correlation of security-relevant events — with endpoint forensics, network visibility and deception technology, and consolidates them into three building tiers: Sentry, Orchestrate and Command.

    Read in glossary
    7.8 Methodology
    CVSS v3

    CVSS is the globally established, open standard for assessing the technical severity of a vulnerability on a scale from 0 to 10. It describes how easily a flaw can be exploited and what damage it can cause — but not how likely its actual exploitation is. CVSS and the complementary EPSS deliberately answer different questions.

    Read in glossary
    7.8
    EPSS score

    The EPSS score is the absolute model output for an individual vulnerability: the estimated probability of real-world exploitation within the next 30 days, expressed as a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. 0 % to 100 %). A score of 0.42 means „the model estimates a 42 % chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days“.

    Read in glossary
    0.2 %
    Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.
    EPSS percentile

    The EPSS percentile is the relative position of a vulnerability within all EPSS-scored CVEs, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A percentile of 0.90 means „this CVE has a higher EPSS score than 90 % of all other scored CVEs“. Unlike the EPSS score, it is not a probability — but a positioning within a ranking.

    Read in glossary
    7.3
    Low — this CVE sits in the lower 10% of all CVEs scored today.
    KEV status

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    —
    Published
    CISA assessment (SSVC)
    Exploitation: none known · not automatable · Technical impact: total
    Source: CISA Vulnrichment, as of 15 October 2026

    Detection rules

    No NEOSEC detection rule is available for this vulnerability yet.

    Classification under NIS2 and CRA

    Rule-based classification from exploitation status and severity. It does not replace a case-by-case assessment.

    NIS2

    NIS2 is EU Directive (EU) 2022/2555 to raise the level of cybersecurity across the Union. It substantially broadens obligations compared with the first NIS directive: more sectors, mandatory risk management, staged reporting duties and personal accountability of senior management.

    Read in glossary
    High technical severity: assess and remediate the vulnerability in vulnerability handling under Art. 21(2)(e) NIS2 and document the decision.
    CRA

    The CRA is EU Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 setting horizontal cybersecurity requirements for „products with digital elements“ — from industrial controllers and software to connected consumer devices. For the first time manufacturers must ensure security across the entire product lifecycle, handle vulnerabilities and provide security updates.

    Read in glossary
    From 11.12.2027, Annex I Part II CRA requires manufacturers of affected products with digital elements to handle vulnerabilities without delay and provide security updates.
    ISO/IEC 27001

    ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally leading standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It describes a risk-based, process-oriented framework to systematically plan, implement, review and improve information security.

    Read in glossary
    Control A.8.8, management of technical vulnerabilities: assess relevance to your systems, plan remediation and keep evidence.

    Description

    In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Fix oob access in cgroup local storage Lonial reported that an out-of-bounds access in cgroup local storage can be crafted via tail calls. Given two programs each utilizing a cgroup local storage with a different value size, and one program doing a tail call into the other. The verifier will validate each of the indivial programs just fine. However, in the runtime context the bpf_cg_run_ctx holds an bpf_prog_array_item which contains the BPF program as well as any cgroup local storage flavor the program uses. Helpers such as bpf_get_local_storage() pick this up from the runtime context: ctx = container_of(current->bpf_ctx, struct bpf_cg_run_ctx, run_ctx); storage = ctx->prog_item->cgroup_storage[stype]; if (stype == BPF_CGROUP_STORAGE_SHARED) ptr = &READ_ONCE(storage->buf)->data[0]; else ptr = this_cpu_ptr(storage->percpu_buf); For the second program which was called from the originally attached one, this means bpf_get_local_storage() will pick up the former program's map, not its own. With mismatching sizes, this can result in an unintended out-of-bounds access. To fix this issue, we need to extend bpf_map_owner with an array of storage_cookie[] to match on i) the exact maps from the original program if the second program was using bpf_get_local_storage(), or ii) allow the tail call combination if the second program was not using any of the cgroup local storage maps.

    Source: Debian Security Advisories, siemens_advisory, Debian LTS Advisories, BSI WID Portal, BSI CSAF, cvelistv5, NVD (NIST), Microsoft Security Update Guide, CVE.org (MITRE), ENISA EUVD

    Affected products

    The following versions are affected. Older releases of the same product line are also vulnerable unless stated otherwise.

    Affected products
    Affected versionsFixed in
    LinuxLinux
    • 6.2 – < 6.6.105
    • 6.13 – < 6.16.1
    • 5.9 – < 5.15.192
    • 5.16 – < 6.1.151
    • —
    • 6.7 – < 6.12.46
    • 6.6.105
    • 6.16.1
    • 5.15.192
    • 6.1.151
    • 6.17
    • 6.12.46

    Vendors and products

    Affected operating systems

    Affected operating systems
    Linuxdebiandebian_linux11.0
    Linuxdebianlinuxbookworm
    Linuxdebianlinuxtrixie
    Linuxdebianlinux-6.1bullseye
    Linuxlinuxlinux_kernel—
    Othersiemenssimatic_cn_4100_firmware—

    Public exploit references

    Publicly reported proof-of-concepts, exploit modules and detection templates for this vulnerability. NEOSEC links to the original sources only and does not provide any exploit code.

    Public exploit references
    PoC-in-GitHub (nomi-sec)CVE-2025-38502-Linux-LPE (opens in a new tab)github.comPoC (publicly reported)reported, not verified

    References & sources

    Changes to this CVE

    Who changed this CVE and when: NVD (analysis, affected products, CVSS), the CVE publisher (CNA) and additional providers such as CISA (ADP).

    1. Record modifiedLinux

      Show 18 original changes
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/19341d5c59e8c7e8528e40f8663e99d67810473c
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/41688d1fc5d163a6c2c0e95c0419e2cb31a44648
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/66da7cee78590259b400e51a70622ccd41da7bb2
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7acfa07c585e3d7a64654d38f0a5c762877d0b9b
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/abad3d0bad72a52137e0c350c59542d75ae4f513
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c1c74584b9b4043c52e41fec415226e582d266a3
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/19341d5c59e8c7e8528e40f8663e99d67810473c
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/41688d1fc5d163a6c2c0e95c0419e2cb31a44648
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/66da7cee78590259b400e51a70622ccd41da7bb2
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7acfa07c585e3d7a64654d38f0a5c762877d0b9b
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/abad3d0bad72a52137e0c350c59542d75ae4f513
      —
      Referenceremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c1c74584b9b4043c52e41fec415226e582d266a3
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/19341d5c59e8c7e8528e40f8663e99d67810473c Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/41688d1fc5d163a6c2c0e95c0419e2cb31a44648 Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/66da7cee78590259b400e51a70622ccd41da7bb2 Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7acfa07c585e3d7a64654d38f0a5c762877d0b9b Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/abad3d0bad72a52137e0c350c59542d75ae4f513 Types: Patch
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c1c74584b9b4043c52e41fec415226e582d266a3 Types: Patch
      —

      Source identifier: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

    2. Record modifiedCISA ADP

      CISA assessment (SSVC): exploitation: none known, automatable: no

      Show the original change
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      SSVC assessmentadded
      —
      {"id":"CVE-2025-38502","role":"CISA Coordinator","options":[{"exploitation":"none"},{"automatable":"no"},{"technicalImpact":"total"}],"version":"2.0.3","timestamp":"2026-10-15T21:51:03.238888Z"}

      Source identifier: 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0

    3. Record modifiedCVE Program

      Show 3 original changes
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/10/msg00008.html
      Referenceremoved
      https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/10/msg00008.html
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/10/msg00008.html Types: Mailing List, Third Party Advisory
      —

      Source identifier: af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108

    4. Record modifiedSiemens ADP

      Show 3 original changes
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-032379.html
      Referenceremoved
      https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-032379.html
      —
      Reference typeremoved
      https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-032379.html Types: Third Party Advisory
      —

      Source identifier: 0b142b55-0307-4c5a-b3c9-f314f3fb7c5e

    5. Record modifiedLinux

      CVSS V3.1: AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

      Show the original change
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      CVSSadded
      —
      AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

      Source identifier: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

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