Linux Kernel up to 6.6.114/6.12.55/6.17.5 intotify_show_fdinfo race condition

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability described as critical has been identified in Linux Kernel up to 6.6.114/6.12.55/6.17.5. Affected by this vulnerability is the function intotify_show_fdinfo. The manipulation results in race condition. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2025-40237. No exploit is available. Upgrading the affected component is recommended.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, was found in Linux Kernel up to 6.6.114/6.12.55/6.17.5. Affected is the function intotify_show_fdinfo. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a race condition vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-362. The product contains a code sequence that can run concurrently with other code, and the code sequence requires temporary, exclusive access to a shared resource, but a timing window exists in which the shared resource can be modified by another code sequence that is operating concurrently. The impact remains unknown. CVE summarizes:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fs/notify: call exportfs_encode_fid with s_umount Calling intotify_show_fdinfo() on fd watching an overlayfs inode, while the overlayfs is being unmounted, can lead to dereferencing NULL ptr. This issue was found by syzkaller. Race Condition Diagram: Thread 1 Thread 2 -------- -------- generic_shutdown_super() shrink_dcache_for_umount sb->s_root = NULL | | vfs_read() | inotify_fdinfo() | * inode get from mark * | show_mark_fhandle(m, inode) | exportfs_encode_fid(inode, ..) | ovl_encode_fh(inode, ..) | ovl_check_encode_origin(inode) | * deref i_sb->s_root * | | v fsnotify_sb_delete(sb) Which then leads to: [ 32.133461] Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000006: 0000 [#1] SMP DEBUG_PAGEALLOC KASAN NOPTI [ 32.134438] KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000030-0x0000000000000037] [ 32.135032] CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 4468 Comm: systemd-coredum Not tainted 6.17.0-rc6 #22 PREEMPT(none) <snip registers, unreliable trace> [ 32.143353] Call Trace: [ 32.143732] ovl_encode_fh+0xd5/0x170 [ 32.144031] exportfs_encode_inode_fh+0x12f/0x300 [ 32.144425] show_mark_fhandle+0xbe/0x1f0 [ 32.145805] inotify_fdinfo+0x226/0x2d0 [ 32.146442] inotify_show_fdinfo+0x1c5/0x350 [ 32.147168] seq_show+0x530/0x6f0 [ 32.147449] seq_read_iter+0x503/0x12a0 [ 32.148419] seq_read+0x31f/0x410 [ 32.150714] vfs_read+0x1f0/0x9e0 [ 32.152297] ksys_read+0x125/0x240 IOW ovl_check_encode_origin derefs inode->i_sb->s_root, after it was set to NULL in the unmount path. Fix it by protecting calling exportfs_encode_fid() from show_mark_fhandle() with s_umount lock. This form of fix was suggested by Amir in [1]. [1]: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAOQ4uxhbDwhb+2Brs1UdkoF0a3NSdBAOQPNfEHjahrgoKJpLEw@mail.gmail.com/

The advisory is available at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2025-40237 since 04/16/2025. The exploitability is told to be difficult. Technical details are known, but there is no available exploit.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 277597 (Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2025-40237), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 6.6.115, 6.12.56 or 6.17.6 eliminates this vulnerability. Applying the patch bc1c6b803e14ea2b8f7e33b7164013f666ceb656/3f307a9f7a7a2822e38ac451b73e2244e7279496/d1894bc542becb0fda61e7e513b09523cab44030/a7c4bb43bfdc2b9f06ee9d036028ed13a83df42a 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 (277597) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2025-2747). If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

Affected

• Debian Linux
• Google Cloud Platform
• Amazon Linux 2
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Ubuntu Linux
• SUSE Linux
• Oracle Linux
• SUSE openSUSE
• Open Source Linux Kernel
• RESF Rocky Linux
• Microsoft Azure Linux

Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

Version

• 6.6.114
• 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
• 6.12.44
• 6.12.45
• 6.12.46
• 6.12.47
• 6.12.48
• 6.12.49
• 6.12.50
• 6.12.51
• 6.12.52
• 6.12.53
• 6.12.54
• 6.12.55
• 6.17.0
• 6.17.1
• 6.17.2
• 6.17.3
• 6.17.4
• 6.17.5

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

CPE 2.3info

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CPE 2.2info

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Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

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Entryinfo

If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

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