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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2025-38434 json

Revert "riscv: Define TASK_SIZE_MAX for __access_ok()"

published 2025-07-25 15 mo ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2025-22712

cvss
7.8
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 10%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

Revert "riscv: Define TASK_SIZE_MAX for __access_ok()"

This reverts commit ad5643cf2f69 ("riscv: Define TASK_SIZE_MAX for __access_ok()").

This commit changes TASK_SIZE_MAX to be LONG_MAX to optimize access_ok(), because the previous TASK_SIZE_MAX (default to TASK_SIZE) requires some computation.

The reasoning was that all user addresses are less than LONG_MAX, and all kernel addresses are greater than LONG_MAX. Therefore access_ok() can filter kernel addresses.

Addresses between TASK_SIZE and LONG_MAX are not valid user addresses, but access_ok() let them pass. That was thought to be okay, because they are not valid addresses at hardware level.

Unfortunately, one case is missed: get_user_pages_fast() happily accepts addresses between TASK_SIZE and LONG_MAX. futex(), for instance, uses get_user_pages_fast(). This causes the problem reported by Robert [1].

Therefore, revert this commit. TASK_SIZE_MAX is changed to the default: TASK_SIZE.

This unfortunately reduces performance, because TASK_SIZE is more expensive to compute compared to LONG_MAX. But correctness first, we can think about optimization later, if required.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.12.36, 6.15.5, 6.16
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.12.37-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-38434

  • linux-aws-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1015.15~24.04.1
  • linux-gcp-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1018.19~24.04.1
  • linux-oem-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1014.14
  • linux-azure-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1014.14~24.04.1
  • linux-riscv-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-34.34.1~24.04.1
  • linux-oracle-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1015.15~24.04.1
  • linux-azure-nvidia-6.14 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1007.7
  • linux-realtime-6.14 Ubuntu Pro Realtime 24.04 LTS 6.14.0-1014.14~24.04.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-38434

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-2025-38434 updated

kernel: Revert "riscv: Define TASK_SIZE_MAX for __access_ok()"

  • 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

0.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 10% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/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

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.