CVE-2025-39848: ax25: properly unshare skbs in ax25_kiss_rcv()

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: 2025-09-19 · updated 2026-10-19
Weakness: CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ax25: properly unshare skbs in ax25_kiss_rcv() Bernard Pidoux reported a regression apparently caused by commit c353e8983e0d ("net: introduce per netns packet chains"). skb->dev becomes NULL and we crash in __netif_receive_skb_core(). Before above commit, different kind of bugs or corruptions could happen without a major crash. But the root cause is that ax25_kiss_rcv() can queue/mangle input skb without checking if this skb is shared or not. Many thanks to Bernard Pidoux for his help, diagnosis and tests. We had a similar issue years ago fixed with commit 7aaed57c5c28 ("phonet: properly unshare skbs in phonet_rcv()").

Affected products

Debian Linux: 11.0
Linux kernel: from 2.6.12.1 before 5.4.299; from 5.5 before 5.10.243; from 5.11 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 — fixed in 5.10.243, 5.15.192, 5.4.299, 6.1.151, 6.12.46, 6.16.6

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.243, 5.15.192, 5.4.299, 6.1.151. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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