Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-37865

Linux Kernel 5.18 – 6.1.135

Published
09 May 2025
Modified
17 June 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 5.5
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0027 18th percentile
Risk Priority 42 floored blend · peak EPSS

CVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.

Summary

CVE-2025-37865 is a medium-severity Use of Uninitialized Resource (CWE-908) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique OS Credential Dumping (T1003); ranked at the 18th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: dsa: mv88e6xxx: fix -ENOENT when deleting VLANs and MST is unsupported Russell King reports that on the ZII dev rev B, deleting a bridge VLAN from a user port…

more

fails with -ENOENT: https://lore.kernel.org/netdev/Z_lQXNP0s5-IiJzd@shell.armlinux.org.uk/ This comes from mv88e6xxx_port_vlan_leave() -> mv88e6xxx_mst_put(), which tries to find an MST entry in &chip->msts associated with the SID, but fails and returns -ENOENT as such. But we know that this chip does not support MST at all, so that is not surprising. The question is why does the guard in mv88e6xxx_mst_put() not exit early: if (!sid) return 0; And the answer seems to be simple: the sid comes from vlan.sid which supposedly was previously populated by mv88e6xxx_vtu_get(). But some chip->info->ops->vtu_getnext() implementations do not populate vlan.sid, for example see mv88e6185_g1_vtu_getnext(). In that case, later in mv88e6xxx_port_vlan_leave() we are using a garbage sid which is just residual stack memory. Testing for sid == 0 covers all cases of a non-bridge VLAN or a bridge VLAN mapped to the default MSTI. For some chips, SID 0 is valid and installed by mv88e6xxx_stu_setup(). A chip which does not support the STU would implicitly only support mapping all VLANs to the default MSTI, so although SID 0 is not valid, it would be sufficient, if we were to zero-initialize the vlan structure, to fix the bug, due to the coincidence that a test for vlan.sid == 0 already exists and leads to the same (correct) behavior. Another option which would be sufficient would be to add a test for mv88e6xxx_has_stu() inside mv88e6xxx_mst_put(), symmetric to the one which already exists in mv88e6xxx_mst_get(). But that placement means the caller will have to dereference vlan.sid, which means it will access uninitialized memory, which is not nice even if it ignores it later. So we end up making both modifications, in order to not rely just on the sid == 0 coincidence, but also to avoid having uninitialized structure fields which might get temporarily accessed.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1003 OS Credential Dumping Credential Access
Adversaries may attempt to dump credentials to obtain account login and credential material, normally in the form of a hash or a clear text password.
T1212 Exploitation for Credential Access Credential Access
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to collect credentials.
T1552 Unsecured Credentials Credential Access
Adversaries may search compromised systems to find and obtain insecurely stored credentials.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2025-37990Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2024-27431Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2024-26857Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2024-35849Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2025-39812Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2025-38441Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2024-26863Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2025-38225Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2025-38644Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2024-26805Same product: Debian Debian Linux

Affected Assets

linux
linux kernel
6.15 · 5.18 — 6.1.135 · 6.2 — 6.6.88 · 6.7 — 6.12.25
debian
debian linux
11.0

Mitigating Controls

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Developer testing and evaluation (including static analysis) can find uses of uninitialized resources after they are coded.

Requiring documented development standards and tools can mandate initialization checks and safe patterns that stop the weakness from being introduced.

Engineering principles can require explicit resource initialization before use, structurally avoiding uninitialized access.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.PS-06 mostly match
prevents

Secure SDLC activities such as static analysis and code review directly prevent use of uninitialized resources while also addressing many other weaknesses.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

finds

Security testing in development and acceptance can detect uninitialized resource usage through dynamic analysis and fuzzing.

prevents

Secure development life cycle mandates initialization checks and static analysis that can catch uninitialized resource use.

prevents

Application security requirements can specify mandatory initialization of variables and resources before use.

prevents

Secure system architecture and engineering principles include defensive coding practices that prevent use of uninitialized memory or objects.

prevents

Secure coding standards directly require explicit initialization of all variables and resources, substantially mitigating CWE-908.

References