CVE-2025-38207 | mm: fix uprobe pte be overwritten when expanding vma

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm: fix uprobe pte be overwritten when expanding vma Patch series "Fix uprobe pte be overwritten when expanding vma". This patch (of 4): We encountered a BUG alert triggered by Syzkaller as follows: BUG: Bad rss-counter state mm:00000000b4a60fca type:MM_ANONPAGES val:1 And we can reproduce it with the following steps: 1. register uprobe on file at zero offset 2. mmap the file at zero offset: addr1 = mmap(NULL, 2 * 4096, PROT_NONE, MAP_PRIVATE, fd, 0); 3. mremap part of vma1 to new vma2: addr2 = mremap(addr1, 4096, 2 * 4096, MREMAP_MAYMOVE); 4. mremap back to orig addr1: mremap(addr2, 4096, 4096, MREMAP_MAYMOVE | MREMAP_FIXED, addr1); In step 3, the vma1 range [addr1, addr1 + 4096] will be remap to new vma2 with range [addr2, addr2 + 8192], and remap uprobe anon page from the vma1 to vma2, then unmap the vma1 range [addr1, addr1 + 4096]. In step 4, the vma2 range [addr2, addr2 + 4096] will be remap back to the addr range [addr1, addr1 + 4096]. Since the addr range [addr1 + 4096, addr1 + 8192] still maps the file, it will take vma_merge_new_range to expand the range, and then do uprobe_mmap in vma_complete. Since the merged vma pgoff is also zero offset, it will install uprobe anon page to the merged vma. However, the upcomming move_page_tables step, which use set_pte_at to remap the vma2 uprobe pte to the merged vma, will overwrite the newly uprobe pte in the merged vma, and lead that pte to be orphan. Since the uprobe pte will be remapped to the merged vma, we can remove the unnecessary uprobe_mmap upon merged vma. This problem was first found in linux-6.6.y and also exists in the community syzkaller: https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/T/

Published: 2025-07-04 Last update: 2025-11-18 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2025-38207 is rated Low Risk (30.1/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.08%). 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-2025-38207

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 2026-04-30 0.02% 0.08% +0.06%
2 2025-07-05 0.02%

Full EPSS history (2 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2025-38207

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N 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:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:N)
Service keeps running; no real outage angle.
1.8 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2025-38207

OS Trackers for CVE-2025-38207

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2025-38207 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (linux), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): open 3, resolved 2. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2025-38207
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-38207
suse medium CVE-2025-38207 severity moderate: SUSE including 52 source package names (cluster-md-kmp-default, dlm-kmp-default, …), 309 product×package rows across 56 product lines (SLES-LTSS-TERADATA 15 SP2, SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7, … (56 product lines)): Known Not Affected 283, Fixed 26. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-38207/
ubuntu medium CVE-2025-38207 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 185, needed 110, released 92, not-affected 17, needs-triage 2. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2025-38207

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2025-38207

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
linux linux_kernel >= 3.5, < 6.15.4 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2025-38207

cvelogic Threat Intelligence