CVE-2025-38384
Linux Kernel ≤ 5.15.187
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-2025-38384 is a medium-severity Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime (CWE-401) 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 6th 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
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-22619
Vulnerability Data
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mtd: spinand: fix memory leak of ECC engine conf Memory allocated for the ECC engine conf is not released during spinand cleanup. Below kmemleak trace is seen for this memory…
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leak: unreferenced object 0xffffff80064f00e0 (size 8): comm "swapper/0", pid 1, jiffies 4294937458 hex dump (first 8 bytes): 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........ backtrace (crc 0): kmemleak_alloc+0x30/0x40 __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x208/0x3c0 spinand_ondie_ecc_init_ctx+0x114/0x200 nand_ecc_init_ctx+0x70/0xa8 nanddev_ecc_engine_init+0xec/0x27c spinand_probe+0xa2c/0x1620 spi_mem_probe+0x130/0x21c spi_probe+0xf0/0x170 really_probe+0x17c/0x6e8 __driver_probe_device+0x17c/0x21c driver_probe_device+0x58/0x180 __device_attach_driver+0x15c/0x1f8 bus_for_each_drv+0xec/0x150 __device_attach+0x188/0x24c device_initial_probe+0x10/0x20 bus_probe_device+0x11c/0x160 Fix the leak by calling nanddev_ecc_engine_cleanup() inside spinand_cleanup().
- 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 (static analysis, fuzzing, or runtime leak detection) directly finds missing deallocation.
Requiring documented development standards and tools can mandate memory-management disciplines that avoid leaks at introduction.
Engineering principles applied during development can require explicit resource-release patterns that stop memory leaks from being coded.
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 directly enforce proper memory allocation/deallocation via coding standards, reviews, and tooling.
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 in development can detect unreleased memory, providing partial coverage of the weakness.
Secure development life cycle mandates memory-management practices that reduce missing-release defects.
Application security requirements can specify explicit memory-release rules, partially mitigating the weakness.
Secure system architecture and engineering principles include resource-management guidelines that address memory leaks.
Secure coding standards directly require proper allocation/deallocation, covering most of this weakness.
Capacity management may detect memory exhaustion symptoms but does not prevent the coding flaw.