CVE-2025-23142 | sctp: detect and prevent references to a freed transport in sendmsg

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sctp: detect and prevent references to a freed transport in sendmsg sctp_sendmsg() re-uses associations and transports when possible by doing a lookup based on the socket endpoint and the message destination address, and then sctp_sendmsg_to_asoc() sets the selected transport in all the message chunks to be sent. There's a possible race condition if another thread triggers the removal of that selected transport, for instance, by explicitly unbinding an address with setsockopt(SCTP_SOCKOPT_BINDX_REM), after the chunks have been set up and before the message is sent. This can happen if the send buffer is full, during the period when the sender thread temporarily releases the socket lock in sctp_wait_for_sndbuf(). This causes the access to the transport data in sctp_outq_select_transport(), when the association outqueue is flushed, to result in a use-after-free read. This change avoids this scenario by having sctp_transport_free() signal the freeing of the transport, tagging it as "dead". In order to do this, the patch restores the "dead" bit in struct sctp_transport, which was removed in commit 47faa1e4c50e ("sctp: remove the dead field of sctp_transport"). Then, in the scenario where the sender thread has released the socket lock in sctp_wait_for_sndbuf(), the bit is checked again after re-acquiring the socket lock to detect the deletion. This is done while holding a reference to the transport to prevent it from being freed in the process. If the transport was deleted while the socket lock was relinquished, sctp_sendmsg_to_asoc() will return -EAGAIN to let userspace retry the send. The bug was found by a private syzbot instance (see the error report [1] and the C reproducer that triggers it [2]).

Published: 2025-05-01 Last update: 2026-06-17 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2025-23142 is rated Low Risk (34/100): CVSS High severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.18%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2025-23142

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-06-15 0.07% 0.18% +0.11%
2 2026-02-25 0.02% 0.07% +0.05%
3 2025-11-06 0.02%

Full EPSS history (7 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2025-23142

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
7.8 3.1 HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:H)
Serious risk that confidential data gets exposed in a big way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
1.8 5.9 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2025-23142

OS Trackers for CVE-2025-23142

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2025-23142 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 2 source packages (linux, linux-6.1), 6 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 6. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2025-23142
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-23142
suse medium https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-23142/
ubuntu medium CVE-2025-23142 medium priority: Ubuntu including 158 source packages (linux, linux-allwinner-5.19, …), 1551 status rows across 10 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 1145, ignored 167, released 162, needed 44, not-affected 30, needs-triage 2, pending 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2025-23142

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2025-23142

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
linux linux_kernel >= 3.18.128, < 3.19 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 4.4.166, < 4.5 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 4.9.142, < 4.10 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 4.14.85, < 4.15 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 4.19.6, < 5.4.293 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.5, < 5.10.237 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.11, < 5.15.181 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.16, < 6.1.135 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 6.2, < 6.6.88 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 6.7, < 6.12.24 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 6.13, < 6.13.12 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 6.14, < 6.14.3 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.15 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.15:rc1:*:*:*:*:*:*
debian debian_linux 11.0 cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:11.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2025-23142

URL Tags
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0f7df4899299ce4662e5f95badb9dbc57cc37fa5 Patch
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2e5068b7e0ae0a54f6cfd03a2f80977da657f1ee Patch
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3257386be6a7eb8a8bfc9cbfb746df4eb4fc70e8 Patch
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/547762250220325d350d0917a7231480e0f4142b Patch
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5bc83bdf5f5b8010d1ca5a4555537e62413ab4e2 Patch
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7a63f4fb0efb4e69efd990cbb740a848679ec4b0 Patch
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9e7c37fadb3be1fc33073fcf10aa96d166caa697 Patch
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c6fefcb71d246baaf3bacdad1af7ff50ebcfe652 Patch
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f1a69a940de58b16e8249dff26f74c8cc59b32be Patch
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/05/msg00030.html Mailing List Third Party Advisory
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/05/msg00045.html Mailing List Third Party Advisory
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