CVE-2025-38638

Technical Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ipv6: add a retry logic in net6_rt_notify()

inet6_rt_notify() can be called under RCU protection only.

This means the route could be changed concurrently

and rt6_fill_node() could return -EMSGSIZE.

Re-size the skb when this happens and retry, removing

one WARN_ON() that syzbot was able to trigger:

WARNING: CPU: 3 PID: 6291 at net/ipv6/route.c:6342 inet6_rt_notify+0x475/0x4b0 net/ipv6/route.c:6342

Modules linked in:

CPU: 3 UID: 0 PID: 6291 Comm: syz.0.77 Not tainted 6.16.0-rc7-syzkaller #0 PREEMPT(full)

Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 1.16.3-debian-1.16.3-2~bpo12+1 04/01/2014

RIP: 0010:inet6_rt_notify+0x475/0x4b0 net/ipv6/route.c:6342

Code: fc ff ff e8 6d 52 ea f7 e9 47 fc ff ff 48 8b 7c 24 08 4c 89 04 24 e8 5a 52 ea f7 4c 8b 04 24 e9 94 fd ff ff e8 9c fe 84 f7 90 <0f> 0b 90 e9 bd fd ff ff e8 6e 52 ea f7 e9 bb fb ff ff 48 89 df e8

RSP: 0018:ffffc900035cf1d8 EFLAGS: 00010293

RAX: 00000000000

Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories and patches from linux. Update linux_kernel to the latest patched version. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

Affected Products

References