CVE-2025-39765 ALSA: timer: fix ida_free call while not allocated

Medium 5.5 Published 11 Sep 2025 Updated 11 May 2026

A local attacker can trigger a kernel warning and potential denial of service in the ALSA timer subsystem by causing a memory allocation failure during timer creation.

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-2025-39765?

CVE-2025-39765 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 11 Sep 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:

ALSA: timer: fix ida_free call while not allocated

In the snd_utimer_create() function, if the kasprintf() function return NULL, snd_utimer_put_id() will be called, finally use ida_free() to free the unallocated id 0.

the syzkaller reported the following information: ------------[ cut here ]------------ ida_free called for id=0 which is not allocated. WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 1286 at lib/idr.c:592 ida_free+0x1fd/0x2f0 lib/idr.c:592 Modules linked in: CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 1286 Comm: syz-executor164 Not tainted 6.15.8 #3 PREEMPT(lazy) Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.3-4.fc42 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:ida_free+0x1fd/0x2f0 lib/idr.c:592 Code: f8 fc 41 83 fc 3e 76 69 e8 70 b2 f8 (...) RSP: 0018:ffffc900007f79c8 EFLAGS: 00010282 RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: 1ffff920000fef3b RCX: ffffffff872176a5 RDX: ffff88800369d200 RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: ffff88800369d200 RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: ffffffff87ba60a5 R09: 0000000000000000 R10: 0000000000000001 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: 0000000000000002 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: 0000000000000000 FS: 00007f6f1abc1740(0000) GS:ffff8880d76a0000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00007f6f1ad7a784 CR3: 000000007a6e2000 CR4: 00000000000006f0 Call Trace: <TASK> snd_utimer_put_id sound/core/timer.c:2043 [inline] [snd_timer] snd_utimer_create+0x59b/0x6a0 sound/core/timer.c:2184 [snd_timer] snd_utimer_ioctl_create sound/core/timer.c:2202 [inline] [snd_timer] __snd_timer_user_ioctl.isra.0+0x724/0x1340 sound/core/timer.c:2287 [snd_timer] snd_timer_user_ioctl+0x75/0xc0 sound/core/timer.c:2298 [snd_timer] vfs_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:51 [inline] __do_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:907 [inline] __se_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:893 [inline] __x64_sys_ioctl+0x198/0x200 fs/ioctl.c:893 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:63 [inline] do_syscall_64+0x7b/0x160 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:94 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e [...]

The utimer->id should be set properly before the kasprintf() function, ensures the snd_utimer_put_id() function will free the allocated id.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-39765?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2025-39765?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2025-39765 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-39765 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-39765, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-39765, GHSA-3rvm-cw98-w4rx, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-39765, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-39765.