CVE-2025-22072 spufs: fix gang directory lifetimes
A use-after-free vulnerability in the Linux kernel's spufs gang directory handling allows local attackers to potentially execute code or escalate privileges.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2025-22072?
CVE-2025-22072 is a high-severity use after free vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 16 Apr 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
spufs: fix gang directory lifetimes
prior to "[POWERPC] spufs: Fix gang destroy leaks" we used to have a problem with gang lifetimes - creation of a gang returns opened gang directory, which normally gets removed when that gets closed, but if somebody has created a context belonging to that gang and kept it alive until the gang got closed, removal failed and we ended up with a leak.
Unfortunately, it had been fixed the wrong way. Dentry of gang directory was no longer pinned, and rmdir on close was gone. One problem was that failure of open kept calling simple_rmdir() as cleanup, which meant an unbalanced dput(). Another bug was in the success case - gang creation incremented link count on root directory, but that was no longer undone when gang got destroyed.
Fix consists of * reverting the commit in question * adding a counter to gang, protected by ->i_rwsem of gang directory inode. * having it set to 1 at creation time, dropped in both spufs_dir_close() and spufs_gang_close() and bumped in spufs_create_context(), provided that it's not 0. * using simple_recursive_removal() to take the gang directory out when counter reaches zero.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-22072?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2025-22072?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.
Is CVE-2025-22072 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-22072 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-22072, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-22072, GHSA-v6rx-qqxh-7pj6, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2025-22072, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2025-22072, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-22072 and 1 more.