CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-38455 — Linux Linux Kernel security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.5

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: SVM: Reject SEV{-ES} intra host migration if vCPU creation is in-flight Reject migration of SEV{-ES} state if either the source or destination VM is actively creating a vCPU, i.e. if kvm_vm_ioctl_create_vcpu() is in the section between incrementing created_vcpus and online_vcpus. The bulk of vCPU creation runs _outside_ of kvm->lock to allow creating multiple vCPUs in parallel, and so sev_info.es_active can get toggled from false=>true in the destination VM after (or during) svm_vcpu_create(), resulting in an SEV{-ES} VM effectively having a non-SEV{-ES} vCPU. The issue manifests most visibly as a crash when trying to free a vCPU's NULL VMSA page in an SEV-ES VM, but any number of things can go wrong. BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffebde00000000 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI CPU: 227 UID: 0 PID: 64063 Comm: syz.5.60023 Tainted: G U O 6.15.0-smp-DEV #2 NONE Tainted: [U]=USER, [O]=OOT_MODULE Hardware name: Google, Inc. Arcadia_IT_80/Arcadia_IT_80, BIOS 12.52.0-0 10/28/2024 RIP: 0010:consta…

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.5 (3.1)
Published
2025-07-25
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
linux/kernel
Weaknesses
CWE-476

Affected products

  • linux / linux_kernel
  • linux / linux_kernel / 6.16
  • debian / debian_linux / 11.0

Showing 3 representative product identities from 10 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Buffer bounds, memory safety, and memory corruption

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Check exposure

  • Identify affected native-code versions, build flags, architectures, parsers, codecs, drivers, and input paths in all shipped artifacts.
  • Determine whether untrusted data reaches the affected routine and the process privilege, sandbox, and network exposure.
  • Confirm statically linked, vendored, firmware, and platform-provided copies, not only package-manager records.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the maintained upstream correction or replace the affected component, then rebuild every dependent artifact from clean inputs.
  • Adopt bounds-checked interfaces, validated sizes and integer conversions, clear ownership, and memory-safe components where practical.
  • Enable supported compiler and runtime hardening and add sanitized tests and fuzz regression seeds derived from non-weaponized fixtures.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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