Linux Kernel up to 6.12.43/6.16.3 blk_queue_enter deadlock

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as critical has been reported in Linux Kernel up to 6.12.43/6.16.3. This affects the function blk_queue_enter. This manipulation causes deadlock. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2025-39791. No exploit exists. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical was found in Linux Kernel up to 6.12.43/6.16.3. Affected by this vulnerability is the function blk_queue_enter. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a deadlock vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-833. The product contains multiple threads or executable segments that are waiting for each other to release a necessary lock, resulting in deadlock. As an impact it is known to affect availability. The summary by CVE is:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: dm: dm-crypt: Do not partially accept write BIOs with zoned targets Read and write operations issued to a dm-crypt target may be split according to the dm-crypt internal limits defined by the max_read_size and max_write_size module parameters (default is 128 KB). The intent is to improve processing time of large BIOs by splitting them into smaller operations that can be parallelized on different CPUs. For zoned dm-crypt targets, this BIO splitting is still done but without the parallel execution to ensure that the issuing order of write operations to the underlying devices remains sequential. However, the splitting itself causes other problems: 1) Since dm-crypt relies on the block layer zone write plugging to handle zone append emulation using regular write operations, the reminder of a split write BIO will always be plugged into the target zone write plugged. Once the on-going write BIO finishes, this reminder BIO is unplugged and issued from the zone write plug work. If this reminder BIO itself needs to be split, the reminder will be re-issued and plugged again, but that causes a call to a blk_queue_enter(), which may block if a queue freeze operation was initiated. This results in a deadlock as DM submission still holds BIOs that the queue freeze side is waiting for. 2) dm-crypt relies on the emulation done by the block layer using regular write operations for processing zone append operations. This still requires to properly return the written sector as the BIO sector of the original BIO. However, this can be done correctly only and only if there is a single clone BIO used for processing the original zone append operation issued by the user. If the size of a zone append operation is larger than dm-crypt max_write_size, then the orginal BIO will be split and processed as a chain of regular write operations. Such chaining result in an incorrect written sector being returned to the zone append issuer using the original BIO sector. This in turn results in file system data corruptions using xfs or btrfs. Fix this by modifying get_max_request_size() to always return the size of the BIO to avoid it being split with dm_accpet_partial_bio() in crypt_map(). get_max_request_size() is renamed to get_max_request_sectors() to clarify the unit of the value returned and its interface is changed to take a struct dm_target pointer and a pointer to the struct bio being processed. In addition to this change, to ensure that crypt_alloc_buffer() works correctly, set the dm-crypt device max_hw_sectors limit to be at most BIO_MAX_VECS << PAGE_SECTORS_SHIFT (1 MB with a 4KB page architecture). This forces DM core to split write BIOs before passing them to crypt_map(), and thus guaranteeing that dm-crypt can always accept an entire write BIO without needing to split it. This change does not have any effect on the read path of dm-crypt. Read operations can still be split and the BIO fragments processed in parallel. There is also no impact on the performance of the write path given that all zone write BIOs were already processed inline instead of in parallel. This change also does not affect in any way regular dm-crypt block devices.

The advisory is shared at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2025-39791 since 04/16/2025. The exploitation appears to be difficult. Technical details are known, but no exploit is available.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 264740 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2025-39791), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 6.12.44, 6.16.4 or 6.17-rc1 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying a patch 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 (264740), EUVD (EUVD-2025-28922) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2025-2040). If you want to get the best quality for vulnerability data then you always have to consider VulDB.

Affected

• Google Container-Optimized OS
• Debian Linux
• Google Cloud Platform
• Amazon Linux 2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Fedora Linux
• Ubuntu Linux
• SUSE Linux
• Oracle Linux
• SUSE openSUSE
• RESF Rocky Linux
• Open Source Linux Kernel
• Proxmox Virtual Environment
• Proxmox Backup Server
• Dell Secure Connect Gateway
• IBM QRadar SIEM

Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 6.12.0
• 6.12.1
• 6.12.2
• 6.12.3
• 6.12.4
• 6.12.5
• 6.12.6
• 6.12.7
• 6.12.8
• 6.12.9
• 6.12.10
• 6.12.11
• 6.12.12
• 6.12.13
• 6.12.14
• 6.12.15
• 6.12.16
• 6.12.17
• 6.12.18
• 6.12.19
• 6.12.20
• 6.12.21
• 6.12.22
• 6.12.23
• 6.12.24
• 6.12.25
• 6.12.26
• 6.12.27
• 6.12.28
• 6.12.29
• 6.12.30
• 6.12.31
• 6.12.32
• 6.12.33
• 6.12.34
• 6.12.35
• 6.12.36
• 6.12.37
• 6.12.38
• 6.12.39
• 6.12.40
• 6.12.41
• 6.12.42
• 6.12.43
• 6.16.0
• 6.16.1
• 6.16.2
• 6.16.3

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

CPE 2.3info

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CPE 2.2info

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Entryinfo

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