CVE-2025-38681
- Published: 2025-09-04T16:15:35.747
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
mm/ptdump: take the memory hotplug lock inside ptdump_walk_pgd()
Memory hot remove unmaps and tears down various kernel page table regions
as required. The ptdump code can race with concurrent modifications of
the kernel page tables. When leaf entries are modified concurrently, the
dump code may log stale or inconsistent information for a VA range, but
this is otherwise not harmful.
But when intermediate levels of kernel page table are freed, the dump code
will continue to use memory that has been freed and potentially
reallocated for another purpose. In such cases, the ptdump code may
dereference bogus addresses, leading to a number of potential problems.
To avoid the above mentioned race condition, platforms such as arm64,
riscv and s390 take memory hotplug lock, while dumping kernel page table
via the sysfs interface /sys/kernel/debug/kernel_page_tables.
Similar race condition exists while checking for pages that might have
been marked W+X via /sys/kernel/debug/kernel_page_tables/check_wx_pages
which in turn calls ptdump_check_wx(). Instead of solving this race
condition again, let’s just move the memory hotplug lock inside generic
ptdump_check_wx() which will benefit both the scenarios.
Drop get_online_mems() and put_online_mems() combination from all existing
platform ptdump code paths.
Related CVE by CWE
No related CWE found.
Top CVE for Vendor
No vendor taxonomy on this entry.
Recently Exploited Similar Vulnerabilities
No recent KEV-listed items for this vendor/product.
How to fix CVE-2025-38681
Description: In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: mm/ptdump: take the memory hotplug lock inside ptdump_walk_pgd() Memory hot remove unmaps and tears down various kernel page table regions as required. The ptdump code can race with concurrent modifications of the kernel page tables. When leaf entries are modified concurrently, the dump code may […]
Exploit Difficulty: HARD
⏱️ Time to exploit: > 4 hours
🛠️ Required skills: Advanced security expertise
💰 Public exploits: Rare or not public
How to Fix:
- Check if you're running the affected product
- Update to the latest patched version
- If patching is not immediately possible: restrict network exposure, apply least-privilege access
- Test the fix in a staging environment first
- Review logs for signs of exploitation
- Monitor for IOCs (Indicators of Compromise)
- Enable automatic security updates
- Set up vulnerability monitoring
- Review and harden security configurations
Exploit Difficulty Assessment
Vulnerability Timeline
CVE details first published to NVD database
Added to this CVE tracking system
Detection Rules & IOCs
No specific detection rules generated for this vulnerability type.
No vendor/product data available.