CVE-2025-68288 usb: storage: Fix memory leak in USB bulk transport
A memory leak in the Linux kernel USB storage driver allows local attackers to read sensitive USB protocol data from user space via SCSI generic interfaces.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2025-68288?
CVE-2025-68288 is a vulnerability in Linux, published on 16 Dec 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:
usb: storage: Fix memory leak in USB bulk transport
A kernel memory leak was identified by the 'ioctl_sg01' test from Linux Test Project (LTP). The following bytes were mainly observed: 0x53425355.
When USB storage devices incorrectly skip the data phase with status data, the code extracts/validates the CSW from the sg buffer, but fails to clear it afterwards. This leaves status protocol data in srb's transfer buffer, such as the US_BULK_CS_SIGN 'USBS' signature observed here. Thus, this can lead to USB protocols leaks to user space through SCSI generic (/dev/sg*) interfaces, such as the one seen here when the LTP test requested 512 KiB.
Fix the leak by zeroing the CSW data in srb's transfer buffer immediately after the validation of devices that skip data phase.
Note: Differently from CVE-2018-1000204, which fixed a big leak by zero- ing pages at allocation time, this leak occurs after allocation, when USB protocol data is written to already-allocated sg pages.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-68288?
How do I fix CVE-2025-68288?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Is CVE-2025-68288 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-68288 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-72631, BELL-CVE-2025-68288, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68288, GHSA-87cr-f8hp-2h8x, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2025-68288, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-68288 and 3 more.