CVE-2025-38008: Linux Kernel

Medium severity, CVSS 4.7. EPSS: 0.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/page_alloc: fix race condition in unaccepted memory handling The page allocator tracks the number of zones that have unaccepted memory using static_branch_enc/dec() and uses that static branch in hot paths to determine if it needs to deal with unaccepted memory. Borislav and Thomas pointed out that the tracking is racy: operations on static_branch are not serialized against adding/removing unaccepted pages to/from the zone. Sanity checks inside static_branch machinery detects it: WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 10 at kernel/jump_label.c:276 __static_key_slow_dec_cpuslocked+0x8e/0xa0 The comment around the WARN() explains the problem: /* * Warn about the '-1' case though; since that means a * decrement is concurrent with a first (0->1) increment. IOW * people are trying to disable something that wasn't yet fully * enabled. This suggests an ordering problem on the user side. */ The effect of this static_branch optimization is only visible on microbenchmark. Instead of adding more complexity around it, remove it altogether.

Affected products

• Linux Linux Kernel: from 6.5, before 6.6.92 (fixed in 6.6.92); from 6.7, before 6.12.30 (fixed in 6.12.30); from 6.13, before 6.14.8 (fixed in 6.14.8); version 6.15 only

Published 2025-06-18. Last modified 2026-06-17.