Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/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-2025-38455 is a high-severity NULL Pointer Dereference (CWE-476) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203); 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-2025-22686
Vulnerability Data
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: SVM: Reject SEV{-ES} intra host migration if vCPU creation is in-flight Reject migration of SEV{-ES} state if either the source or destination VM is actively creating a vCPU, i.e.…
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if kvm_vm_ioctl_create_vcpu() is in the section between incrementing created_vcpus and online_vcpus. The bulk of vCPU creation runs _outside_ of kvm->lock to allow creating multiple vCPUs in parallel, and so sev_info.es_active can get toggled from false=>true in the destination VM after (or during) svm_vcpu_create(), resulting in an SEV{-ES} VM effectively having a non-SEV{-ES} vCPU. The issue manifests most visibly as a crash when trying to free a vCPU's NULL VMSA page in an SEV-ES VM, but any number of things can go wrong. BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffebde00000000 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI CPU: 227 UID: 0 PID: 64063 Comm: syz.5.60023 Tainted: G U O 6.15.0-smp-DEV #2 NONE Tainted: [U]=USER, [O]=OOT_MODULE Hardware name: Google, Inc. Arcadia_IT_80/Arcadia_IT_80, BIOS 12.52.0-0 10/28/2024 RIP: 0010:constant_test_bit arch/x86/include/asm/bitops.h:206 [inline] RIP: 0010:arch_test_bit arch/x86/include/asm/bitops.h:238 [inline] RIP: 0010:_test_bit include/asm-generic/bitops/instrumented-non-atomic.h:142 [inline] RIP: 0010:PageHead include/linux/page-flags.h:866 [inline] RIP: 0010:___free_pages+0x3e/0x120 mm/page_alloc.c:5067 Code: <49> f7 06 40 00 00 00 75 05 45 31 ff eb 0c 66 90 4c 89 f0 4c 39 f0 RSP: 0018:ffff8984551978d0 EFLAGS: 00010246 RAX: 0000777f80000001 RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: ffffffff918aeb98 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000008 RDI: ffffebde00000000 RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: ffffebde00000007 R09: 1ffffd7bc0000000 R10: dffffc0000000000 R11: fffff97bc0000001 R12: dffffc0000000000 R13: ffff8983e19751a8 R14: ffffebde00000000 R15: 1ffffd7bc0000000 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff89ee661d3000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: ffffebde00000000 CR3: 000000793ceaa000 CR4: 0000000000350ef0 DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000b5f DR2: 0000000000000000 DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000ffff0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 Call Trace: <TASK> sev_free_vcpu+0x413/0x630 arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c:3169 svm_vcpu_free+0x13a/0x2a0 arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c:1515 kvm_arch_vcpu_destroy+0x6a/0x1d0 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:12396 kvm_vcpu_destroy virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:470 [inline] kvm_destroy_vcpus+0xd1/0x300 virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:490 kvm_arch_destroy_vm+0x636/0x820 arch/x86/kvm/x86.c:12895 kvm_put_kvm+0xb8e/0xfb0 virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:1310 kvm_vm_release+0x48/0x60 virt/kvm/kvm_main.c:1369 __fput+0x3e4/0x9e0 fs/file_table.c:465 task_work_run+0x1a9/0x220 kernel/task_work.c:227 exit_task_work include/linux/task_work.h:40 [inline] do_exit+0x7f0/0x25b0 kernel/exit.c:953 do_group_exit+0x203/0x2d0 kernel/exit.c:1102 get_signal+0x1357/0x1480 kernel/signal.c:3034 arch_do_signal_or_restart+0x40/0x690 arch/x86/kernel/signal.c:337 exit_to_user_mode_loop kernel/entry/common.c:111 [inline] exit_to_user_mode_prepare include/linux/entry-common.h:329 [inline] __syscall_exit_to_user_mode_work kernel/entry/common.c:207 [inline] syscall_exit_to_user_mode+0x67/0xb0 kernel/entry/common.c:218 do_syscall_64+0x7c/0x150 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:100 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e RIP: 0033:0x7f87a898e969 </TASK> Modules linked in: gq(O) gsmi: Log Shutdown Reason 0x03 CR2: ffffebde00000000 ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]--- Deliberately don't check for a NULL VMSA when freeing the vCPU, as crashing the host is likely desirable due to the VMSA being consumed by hardware. E.g. if KVM manages to allow VMRUN on the vCPU, hardware may read/write a bogus VMSA page. Accessing P ---truncated---
- 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 coding standards directly require NULL-pointer checks and safe dereference patterns.