CVE-2025-38461: vsock: Fix transport_* TOCTOU

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.7 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-07-25 · updated 2026-07-30
Weakness: CWE-367

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: vsock: Fix transport_* TOCTOU Transport assignment may race with module unload. Protect new_transport from becoming a stale pointer. This also takes care of an insecure call in vsock_use_local_transport(); add a lockdep assert. BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: fffffbfff8056000 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN RIP: 0010:vsock_assign_transport+0x366/0x600 Call Trace: vsock_connect+0x59c/0xc40 __sys_connect+0xe8/0x100 __x64_sys_connect+0x6e/0xc0 do_syscall_64+0x92/0x1c0 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53

Affected products

Debian Linux: 11.0
Linux kernel: from 5.5 before 5.10.240; from 5.11 before 5.15.189; from 5.16 before 6.1.146; from 6.2 before 6.6.99; from 6.7 before 6.12.39; from 6.13 before 6.15.7 — fixed in 5.10.240, 5.15.189, 6.1.146, 6.12.39, 6.15.7, 6.6.99

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.240, 5.15.189, 6.1.146, 6.12.39. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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