CVE-2025-38029 kasan: avoid sleepable page allocation from atomic context
A kernel bug causes a crash when KASAN allocates memory in atomic context on s390, leading to denial of service.
- 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-2025-38029?
CVE-2025-38029 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 18 Jun 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:
kasan: avoid sleepable page allocation from atomic context
apply_to_pte_range() enters the lazy MMU mode and then invokes kasan_populate_vmalloc_pte() callback on each page table walk iteration. However, the callback can go into sleep when trying to allocate a single page, e.g. if an architecutre disables preemption on lazy MMU mode enter.
On s390 if make arch_enter_lazy_mmu_mode() -> preempt_enable() and arch_leave_lazy_mmu_mode() -> preempt_disable(), such crash occurs:
[ 0.663336] BUG: sleeping function called from invalid context at ./include/linux/sched/mm.h:321 [ 0.663348] in_atomic(): 1, irqs_disabled(): 0, non_block: 0, pid: 2, name: kthreadd [ 0.663358] preempt_count: 1, expected: 0 [ 0.663366] RCU nest depth: 0, expected: 0 [ 0.663375] no locks held by kthreadd/2. [ 0.663383] Preemption disabled at: [ 0.663386] [<0002f3284cbb4eda>] apply_to_pte_range+0xfa/0x4a0 [ 0.663405] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 2 Comm: kthreadd Not tainted 6.15.0-rc5-gcc-kasan-00043-gd76bb1ebb558-dirty #162 PREEMPT [ 0.663408] Hardware name: IBM 3931 A01 701 (KVM/Linux) [ 0.663409] Call Trace: [ 0.663410] [<0002f3284c385f58>] dump_stack_lvl+0xe8/0x140 [ 0.663413] [<0002f3284c507b9e>] __might_resched+0x66e/0x700 [ 0.663415] [<0002f3284cc4f6c0>] __alloc_frozen_pages_noprof+0x370/0x4b0 [ 0.663419] [<0002f3284ccc73c0>] alloc_pages_mpol+0x1a0/0x4a0 [ 0.663421] [<0002f3284ccc8518>] alloc_frozen_pages_noprof+0x88/0xc0 [ 0.663424] [<0002f3284ccc8572>] alloc_pages_noprof+0x22/0x120 [ 0.663427] [<0002f3284cc341ac>] get_free_pages_noprof+0x2c/0xc0 [ 0.663429] [<0002f3284cceba70>] kasan_populate_vmalloc_pte+0x50/0x120 [ 0.663433] [<0002f3284cbb4ef8>] apply_to_pte_range+0x118/0x4a0 [ 0.663435] [<0002f3284cbc7c14>] apply_to_pmd_range+0x194/0x3e0 [ 0.663437] [<0002f3284cbc99be>] __apply_to_page_range+0x2fe/0x7a0 [ 0.663440] [<0002f3284cbc9e88>] apply_to_page_range+0x28/0x40 [ 0.663442] [<0002f3284ccebf12>] kasan_populate_vmalloc+0x82/0xa0 [ 0.663445] [<0002f3284cc1578c>] alloc_vmap_area+0x34c/0xc10 [ 0.663448] [<0002f3284cc1c2a6>] __get_vm_area_node+0x186/0x2a0 [ 0.663451] [<0002f3284cc1e696>] __vmalloc_node_range_noprof+0x116/0x310 [ 0.663454] [<0002f3284cc1d950>] __vmalloc_node_noprof+0xd0/0x110 [ 0.663457] [<0002f3284c454b88>] alloc_thread_stack_node+0xf8/0x330 [ 0.663460] [<0002f3284c458d56>] dup_task_struct+0x66/0x4d0 [ 0.663463] [<0002f3284c45be90>] copy_process+0x280/0x4b90 [ 0.663465] [<0002f3284c460940>] kernel_clone+0xd0/0x4b0 [ 0.663467] [<0002f3284c46115e>] kernel_thread+0xbe/0xe0 [ 0.663469] [<0002f3284c4e440e>] kthreadd+0x50e/0x7f0 [ 0.663472] [<0002f3284c38c04a>] __ret_from_fork+0x8a/0xf0 [ 0.663475] [<0002f3284ed57ff2>] ret_from_fork+0xa/0x38
Instead of allocating single pages per-PTE, bulk-allocate the shadow memory prior to applying kasan_populate_vmalloc_pte() callback on a page range.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-38029?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2025-38029?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2025-38029 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-38029 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as AZL-64040, AZL-70274, BELL-CVE-2025-38029, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38029, GHSA-j5w8-q98j-jcfx, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2025-38029 and 5 more.