CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-38703 — Linux Linux Kernel security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/xe: Make dma-fences compliant with the safe access rules Xe can free some of the data pointed to by the dma-fences it exports. Most notably the timeline name can get freed if userspace closes the associated submit queue. At the same time the fence could have been exported to a third party (for example a sync_fence fd) which will then cause an use- after-free on subsequent access. To make this safe we need to make the driver compliant with the newly documented dma-fence rules. Driver has to ensure a RCU grace period between signalling a fence and freeing any data pointed to by said fence. For the timeline name we simply make the queue be freed via kfree_rcu and for the shared lock associated with multiple queues we add a RCU grace period before freeing the per GT structure holding the lock.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.1)
Published
2025-09-04
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
linux/kernel
Weaknesses
CWE-416

Affected products

  • linux / linux_kernel

Showing 1 representative product identities from 3 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Use-after-free, double free, and expired resource use

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Check exposure

  • Trace ownership, references, callbacks, asynchronous tasks, and teardown paths around the affected object or resource.
  • Identify reachable inputs and timing or state transitions that can release the object while references remain.
  • Confirm affected builds, allocators, feature flags, architectures, and process privileges.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the maintained ownership or lifetime fix and rebuild all artifacts containing the affected native code.
  • Use explicit ownership, safe reference management, cancellation and join semantics, and idempotent teardown.
  • Add deterministic lifetime tests plus isolated sanitizer and concurrency coverage for shutdown and error paths.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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