CVE-2025-38256: io_uring/rsrc: fix folio unpinning

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-07-09 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: io_uring/rsrc: fix folio unpinning syzbot complains about an unmapping failure: [ 108.070381][ T14] kernel BUG at mm/gup.c:71! [ 108.070502][ T14] Internal error: Oops - BUG: 00000000f2000800 [#1] SMP [ 108.123672][ T14] Hardware name: QEMU KVM Virtual Machine, BIOS edk2-20250221-8.fc42 02/21/2025 [ 108.127458][ T14] Workqueue: iou_exit io_ring_exit_work [ 108.174205][ T14] Call trace: [ 108.175649][ T14] sanity_check_pinned_pages+0x7cc/0x7d0 (P) [ 108.178138][ T14] unpin_user_page+0x80/0x10c [ 108.180189][ T14] io_release_ubuf+0x84/0xf8 [ 108.182196][ T14] io_free_rsrc_node+0x250/0x57c [ 108.184345][ T14] io_rsrc_data_free+0x148/0x298 [ 108.186493][ T14] io_sqe_buffers_unregister+0x84/0xa0 [ 108.188991][ T14] io_ring_ctx_free+0x48/0x480 [ 108.191057][ T14] io_ring_exit_work+0x764/0x7d8 [ 108.193207][ T14] process_one_work+0x7e8/0x155c [ 108.195431][ T14] worker_thread+0x958/0xed8 [ 108.197561][ T14] kthread+0x5fc/0x75c [ 108.199362][ T14] ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20 We can pin a tail page of a folio, but then io_uring will try to unpin the head page of the folio. While it should be fine in terms of keeping the page actually alive, mm folks say it's wrong and triggers a debug warning. Use unpin_user_folio() instead of unpin_user_page*. [axboe: adapt to current tree, massage commit message]

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.12 before 6.12.36; from 6.13 before 6.15.5; 6.16-rc1, 6.16-rc2, 6.16-rc3 — fixed in 6.12.36, 6.15.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.12.36, 6.15.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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