CVE-2025-40024: Linux

High severity, CVSS 7.8. EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: vhost: Take a reference on the task in struct vhost_task. vhost_task_create() creates a task and keeps a reference to its task_struct. That task may exit early via a signal and its task_struct will be released. A pending vhost_task_wake() will then attempt to wake the task and access a task_struct which is no longer there. Acquire a reference on the task_struct while creating the thread and release the reference while the struct vhost_task itself is removed. If the task exits early due to a signal, then the vhost_task_wake() will still access a valid task_struct. The wake is safe and will be skipped in this case.

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 6.4, before 6.6.109 (fixed in 6.6.109); from 6.7, before 6.12.50 (fixed in 6.12.50); from 6.13, before 6.16.10 (fixed in 6.16.10)

Published 2025-10-24. Last modified 2026-07-30.