CVEvulnerability

CVE-2025-38488

7.8 HIGH Published 2025-07-28 Modified 2026-07-30 Official page ↗
Status
Modified
Published
2025-07-28
Last modified
2026-07-30
Assigner
416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
CVSS 3.1 (416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67)
9.8 CRITICAL — CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 3.1 ([email protected])
7.8 HIGH — CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Weaknesses
CWE-416

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: smb: client: fix use-after-free in crypt_message when using async crypto The CVE-2024-50047 fix removed asynchronous crypto handling from crypt_message(), assuming all crypto operations are synchronous. However, when hardware crypto accelerators are used, this can cause use-after-free crashes: crypt_message() // Allocate the creq buffer containing the req creq = smb2_get_aead_req(..., &req); // Async encryption returns -EINPROGRESS immediately rc = enc ? crypto_aead_encrypt(req) : crypto_aead_decrypt(req); // Free creq while async operation is still in progress kvfree_sensitive(creq, ...); Hardware crypto modules often implement async AEAD operations for performance. When crypto_aead_encrypt/decrypt() returns -EINPROGRESS, the operation completes asynchronously. Without crypto_wait_req(), the function immediately frees the request buffer, leading to crashes when the driver later accesses the freed memory. This results in a use-after-free condition when the hardware crypto driver later accesses the freed request structure, leading to kernel crashes with NULL pointer dereferences. The issue occurs because crypto_alloc_aead() with mask=0 doesn't guarantee synchronous operation. Even without CRYPTO_ALG_ASYNC in the mask, async implementations can be selected. Fix by restoring the async crypto handling: - DECLARE_CRYPTO_WAIT(wait) for completion tracking - aead_request_set_callback() for async completion notification - crypto_wait_req() to wait for operation completion This ensures the request buffer isn't freed until the crypto operation completes, whether synchronous or asynchronous, while preserving the CVE-2024-50047 fix.

Affected configurations

• linux linux kernel (>= 5.10.237 < 5.10.241) • linux linux kernel (>= 5.15.181 < 5.15.190) • linux linux kernel (>= 6.1.128 < 6.1.147) • linux linux kernel (>= 6.6.57 < 6.6.100) • linux linux kernel (>= 6.11.4 < 6.12.40) • linux linux kernel (>= 6.13 < 6.15.8) • linux linux kernel 6.16 • debian debian linux 11.0

Related

Weakness · CWE (1)

References