Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-38102

Race Condition in Linux Kernel 4.0 – 5.4.296

Published
03 July 2025
Modified
30 July 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 7.8
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0013 3th percentile
Risk Priority 54 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-2025-38102 is a high-severity Race Condition (CWE-362) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 3th 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 SC-39 (Process Isolation) and SC-4 (Information in Shared System Resources) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: VMCI: fix race between vmci_host_setup_notify and vmci_ctx_unset_notify During our test, it is found that a warning can be trigger in try_grab_folio as follow: ------------[ cut here ]------------ WARNING: CPU: 0…

more

PID: 1678 at mm/gup.c:147 try_grab_folio+0x106/0x130 Modules linked in: CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 1678 Comm: syz.3.31 Not tainted 6.15.0-rc5 #163 PREEMPT(undef) RIP: 0010:try_grab_folio+0x106/0x130 Call Trace: <TASK> follow_huge_pmd+0x240/0x8e0 follow_pmd_mask.constprop.0.isra.0+0x40b/0x5c0 follow_pud_mask.constprop.0.isra.0+0x14a/0x170 follow_page_mask+0x1c2/0x1f0 __get_user_pages+0x176/0x950 __gup_longterm_locked+0x15b/0x1060 ? gup_fast+0x120/0x1f0 gup_fast_fallback+0x17e/0x230 get_user_pages_fast+0x5f/0x80 vmci_host_unlocked_ioctl+0x21c/0xf80 RIP: 0033:0x54d2cd ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]--- Digging into the source, context->notify_page may init by get_user_pages_fast and can be seen in vmci_ctx_unset_notify which will try to put_page. However get_user_pages_fast is not finished here and lead to following try_grab_folio warning. The race condition is shown as follow: cpu0 cpu1 vmci_host_do_set_notify vmci_host_setup_notify get_user_pages_fast(uva, 1, FOLL_WRITE, &context->notify_page); lockless_pages_from_mm gup_pgd_range gup_huge_pmd // update &context->notify_page vmci_host_do_set_notify vmci_ctx_unset_notify notify_page = context->notify_page; if (notify_page) put_page(notify_page); // page is freed __gup_longterm_locked __get_user_pages follow_trans_huge_pmd try_grab_folio // warn here To slove this, use local variable page to make notify_page can be seen after finish get_user_pages_fast.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to elevate privileges.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2024-26984Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2024-26960Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2024-26923Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2025-38393Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2024-24858Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2025-38477Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2025-38687Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2025-38078Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2024-26859Same product: Debian Debian Linux
CVE-2024-27419Same product: Debian Debian Linux

Affected Assets

linux
linux kernel
4.0 — 5.4.296 · 5.5 — 5.10.240 · 5.11 — 5.15.186
debian
debian linux
11.0

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

—

Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

—

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)

—

Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V10.4.2
  • V10.4.5
  • V15.1.3
  • V15.4.1

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Maintaining separate execution domains for each process structurally eliminates unintended concurrent access to the same shared resources.

Preventing unintended information transfer through shared system resources directly addresses the improper concurrent modification that defines a race condition.

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 practices directly require proper synchronization primitives and concurrency testing that prevent race conditions.

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 can detect race conditions, but does not prevent them at design or coding time.

prevents

Secure SDLC mandates concurrency controls and synchronization primitives that directly prevent race conditions.

prevents

Application security requirements can specify thread-safety and locking rules, but do not prescribe implementation details.

prevents

Secure architecture principles require proper synchronization and resource isolation, addressing the root cause of CWE-362.

prevents

Secure coding standards explicitly forbid unsafe concurrent access patterns and mandate atomic operations or locks.

References