What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2025-38502: bpf: Fix oob access in cgroup local storage
- Severity: high (CVSS 7.1 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: 2025-08-16 · updated 2026-10-15
- Weakness: CWE-125
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.
Affected products
- Debian Linux: 11.0
- Linux kernel: from 5.9 before 5.15.192; from 5.16 before 6.1.151; from 6.2 before 6.6.105; from 6.7 before 6.12.46; from 6.13 before 6.16.1 — fixed in 5.15.192, 6.1.151, 6.12.46, 6.16.1, 6.6.105
- Siemens SIMATIC CN 4100: before 5.0 — fixed in 5.0
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.15.192, 6.1.151, 6.12.46, 6.16.1; Siemens SIMATIC CN 4100 5.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/19341d5c59e8c7e8528e40f8663e99d67810473c
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/41688d1fc5d163a6c2c0e95c0419e2cb31a44648
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/66da7cee78590259b400e51a70622ccd41da7bb2
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7acfa07c585e3d7a64654d38f0a5c762877d0b9b
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/abad3d0bad72a52137e0c350c59542d75ae4f513
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c1c74584b9b4043c52e41fec415226e582d266a3
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/10/msg00008.html
- https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-032379.html
Get alerted when CVE-2025-38502 or the next vulnerability affects your stack