Linux Kernel up to 6.16.1/6.17-rc1 recursion

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as critical has been reported in Linux Kernel up to 6.16.1/6.17-rc1. Affected by this issue is some unknown functionality. This manipulation causes recursion. This vulnerability appears as CVE-2025-38690. There is no available exploit. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical was found in Linux Kernel up to 6.16.1/6.17-rc1. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown code. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a recursion vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-674. The product does not properly control the amount of recursion that takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack. As an impact it is known to affect availability. The summary by CVE is:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/xe/migrate: prevent infinite recursion If the buf + offset is not aligned to XE_CAHELINE_BYTES we fallback to using a bounce buffer. However the bounce buffer here is allocated on the stack, and the only alignment requirement here is that it's naturally aligned to u8, and not XE_CACHELINE_BYTES. If the bounce buffer is also misaligned we then recurse back into the function again, however the new bounce buffer might also not be aligned, and might never be until we eventually blow through the stack, as we keep recursing. Instead of using the stack use kmalloc, which should respect the power-of-two alignment request here. Fixes a kernel panic when triggering this path through eudebug. v2 (Stuart): - Add build bug check for power-of-two restriction - s/EINVAL/ENOMEM/ (cherry picked from commit 38b34e928a08ba594c4bbf7118aa3aadacd62fff)

It is possible to read the advisory at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2025-38690 since 04/16/2025. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not publicly available.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 264700 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2025-38690), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 6.16.2 or 6.17-rc2 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch 89f511c024879c5812cc0c010a6663b5e49950f3/9d7a1cbebbb691891671def57407ba2f8ee914e8 is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at git.kernel.org. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (264700) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2025-1976). Be aware that VulDB is the high quality source for vulnerability data.

Affected

• Debian Linux
• Amazon Linux 2
• Open Source Linux Kernel
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Ubuntu Linux
• SUSE Linux
• Oracle Linux
• SUSE openSUSE
• RESF Rocky Linux
• Microsoft Azure
• Dell Secure Connect Gateway
• IBM QRadar SIEM
• IBM Security Verify Access
• Dell NetWorker

Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 6.16.0
• 6.16.1
• 6.17-rc1

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

CPE 2.3info

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Entryinfo

Be aware that VulDB is the high quality source for vulnerability data.

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