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Fencer Vulns
high 8.8

CVE-2025-37996 json

KVM: arm64: Fix uninitialized memcache pointer in user_mem_abort()

published 2025-05-29 17 mo ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2025-16380

cvss
8.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 6%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

KVM: arm64: Fix uninitialized memcache pointer in user_mem_abort()

Commit fce886a60207 ("KVM: arm64: Plumb the pKVM MMU in KVM") made the initialization of the local memcache variable in user_mem_abort() conditional, leaving a codepath where it is used uninitialized via kvm_pgtable_stage2_map().

This can fail on any path that requires a stage-2 allocation without transition via a permission fault or dirty logging.

Fix this by making sure that memcache is always valid.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.14.7, 6.15
  • linux-aws-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1011.11~24.04.1
  • linux-gcp-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1014.15~24.04.1
  • linux-oem-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1010.10
  • linux-riscv-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-28.28.1~24.04.1
  • linux-oracle-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1011.11~24.04.1
  • linux-realtime-6.14 Ubuntu Pro Realtime 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1010.10~24.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-37996

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2025-37996 updated cvss 7.0

kernel: KVM: arm64: Fix uninitialized memcache pointer in user_mem_abort()

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.17% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 6% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-908 Use of Uninitialized Resource
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.