CVE-2025-68262 crypto: zstd - fix double-free in per-CPU stream cleanup
A double-free vulnerability in the Linux kernel's zstd crypto module allows attackers to cause denial of service or potentially execute code.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Not stated
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2025-68262?
CVE-2025-68262 is an use after free vulnerability in Linux, published on 16 Dec 2025.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
crypto: zstd - fix double-free in per-CPU stream cleanup
The crypto/zstd module has a double-free bug that occurs when multiple tfms are allocated and freed.
The issue happens because zstd_streams (per-CPU contexts) are freed in zstd_exit() during every tfm destruction, rather than being managed at the module level. When multiple tfms exist, each tfm exit attempts to free the same shared per-CPU streams, resulting in a double-free.
This leads to a stack trace similar to:
BUG: Bad page state in process kworker/u16:1 pfn:106fd93 page: refcount:0 mapcount:0 mapping:0000000000000000 index:0x0 pfn:0x106fd93 flags: 0x17ffffc0000000(node=0|zone=2|lastcpupid=0x1fffff) page_type: 0xffffffff() raw: 0017ffffc0000000 dead000000000100 dead000000000122 0000000000000000 raw: 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 00000000ffffffff 0000000000000000 page dumped because: nonzero entire_mapcount Modules linked in: ... CPU: 3 UID: 0 PID: 2506 Comm: kworker/u16:1 Kdump: loaded Tainted: G B Hardware name: ... Workqueue: btrfs-delalloc btrfs_work_helper Call Trace: <TASK> dump_stack_lvl+0x5d/0x80 bad_page+0x71/0xd0 free_unref_page_prepare+0x24e/0x490 free_unref_page+0x60/0x170 crypto_acomp_free_streams+0x5d/0xc0 crypto_acomp_exit_tfm+0x23/0x50 crypto_destroy_tfm+0x60/0xc0 ...
Change the lifecycle management of zstd_streams to free the streams only once during module cleanup.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-68262?
How do I fix CVE-2025-68262?
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-2025-68262 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-68262 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-68262, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68262, GHSA-3792-937m-5pm4, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-68262.