Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2025-38147 is a medium-severity NULL Pointer Dereference (CWE-476) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 7th 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.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-19796
Vulnerability Data
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: calipso: Don't call calipso functions for AF_INET sk. syzkaller reported a null-ptr-deref in txopt_get(). [0] The offset 0x70 was of struct ipv6_txoptions in struct ipv6_pinfo, so struct ipv6_pinfo was NULL…
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there. However, this never happens for IPv6 sockets as inet_sk(sk)->pinet6 is always set in inet6_create(), meaning the socket was not IPv6 one. The root cause is missing validation in netlbl_conn_setattr(). netlbl_conn_setattr() switches branches based on struct sockaddr.sa_family, which is passed from userspace. However, netlbl_conn_setattr() does not check if the address family matches the socket. The syzkaller must have called connect() for an IPv6 address on an IPv4 socket. We have a proper validation in tcp_v[46]_connect(), but security_socket_connect() is called in the earlier stage. Let's copy the validation to netlbl_conn_setattr(). [0]: Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc000000000e: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN NOPTI KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000070-0x0000000000000077] CPU: 2 UID: 0 PID: 12928 Comm: syz.9.1677 Not tainted 6.12.0 #1 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.15.0-1 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:txopt_get include/net/ipv6.h:390 [inline] RIP: 0010: Code: 02 00 00 49 8b ac 24 f8 02 00 00 e8 84 69 2a fd e8 ff 00 16 fd 48 8d 7d 70 48 b8 00 00 00 00 00 fc ff df 48 89 fa 48 c1 ea 03 <80> 3c 02 00 0f 85 53 02 00 00 48 8b 6d 70 48 85 ed 0f 84 ab 01 00 RSP: 0018:ffff88811b8afc48 EFLAGS: 00010212 RAX: dffffc0000000000 RBX: 1ffff11023715f8a RCX: ffffffff841ab00c RDX: 000000000000000e RSI: ffffc90007d9e000 RDI: 0000000000000070 RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: ffffed1023715f9d R09: ffffed1023715f9e R10: ffffed1023715f9d R11: 0000000000000003 R12: ffff888123075f00 R13: ffff88810245bd80 R14: ffff888113646780 R15: ffff888100578a80 FS: 00007f9019bd7640(0000) GS:ffff8882d2d00000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00007f901b927bac CR3: 0000000104788003 CR4: 0000000000770ef0 PKRU: 80000000 Call Trace: <TASK> calipso_sock_setattr+0x56/0x80 net/netlabel/netlabel_calipso.c:557 netlbl_conn_setattr+0x10c/0x280 net/netlabel/netlabel_kapi.c:1177 selinux_netlbl_socket_connect_helper+0xd3/0x1b0 security/selinux/netlabel.c:569 selinux_netlbl_socket_connect_locked security/selinux/netlabel.c:597 [inline] selinux_netlbl_socket_connect+0xb6/0x100 security/selinux/netlabel.c:615 selinux_socket_connect+0x5f/0x80 security/selinux/hooks.c:4931 security_socket_connect+0x50/0xa0 security/security.c:4598 __sys_connect_file+0xa4/0x190 net/socket.c:2067 __sys_connect+0x12c/0x170 net/socket.c:2088 __do_sys_connect net/socket.c:2098 [inline] __se_sys_connect net/socket.c:2095 [inline] __x64_sys_connect+0x73/0xb0 net/socket.c:2095 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:52 [inline] do_syscall_64+0xaa/0x1b0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:83 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f RIP: 0033:0x7f901b61a12d Code: 02 b8 ff ff ff ff c3 66 0f 1f 44 00 00 f3 0f 1e fa 48 89 f8 48 89 f7 48 89 d6 48 89 ca 4d 89 c2 4d 89 c8 4c 8b 4c 24 08 0f 05 <48> 3d 01 f0 ff ff 73 01 c3 48 c7 c1 a8 ff ff ff f7 d8 64 89 01 48 RSP: 002b:00007f9019bd6fa8 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 000000000000002a RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 00007f901b925fa0 RCX: 00007f901b61a12d RDX: 000000000000001c RSI: 0000200000000140 RDI: 0000000000000003 RBP: 00007f901b701505 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000 R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 00007f901b5b62a0 R15: 00007f9019bb7000 </TASK> Modules linked in:
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation (including static analysis) directly finds null-dereference bugs before deployment.
Documented development standards and tools can enforce null-safety rules and safe pointer usage.
Engineering principles can mandate defensive coding such as explicit null checks before dereference.
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.
Secure SDLC practices (static analysis, code review, safe coding standards) directly prevent NULL dereference bugs during development.
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.
Security testing can detect NULL dereference defects before release.
Secure SDLC mandates defensive coding practices that can prevent NULL dereferences.
Application security requirements can specify input validation and pointer-safety rules.
Secure architecture principles encourage defensive design that avoids unsafe pointer use.
Secure coding standards directly require NULL-pointer checks and safe dereference patterns.