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Fencer Vulns
high 7.1

CVE-2025-39723 json

netfs: Fix unbuffered write error handling

published 2025-09-05 14 mo ago modified 2026-10-19 20 d ago also EUVD-2025-31504

cvss
7.1
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 15%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

netfs: Fix unbuffered write error handling

If all the subrequests in an unbuffered write stream fail, the subrequest collector doesn't update the stream->transferred value and it retains its initial LONG_MAX value. Unfortunately, if all active streams fail, then we take the smallest value of { LONG_MAX, LONG_MAX, ... } as the value to set in wreq->transferred - which is then returned from ->write_iter().

LONG_MAX was chosen as the initial value so that all the streams can be quickly assessed by taking the smallest value of all stream->transferred - but this only works if we've set any of them.

Fix this by adding a flag to indicate whether the value in stream->transferred is valid and checking that when we integrate the values. stream->transferred can then be initialised to zero.

This was found by running the generic/750 xfstest against cifs with cache=none. It splices data to the target file. Once (if) it has used up all the available scratch space, the writes start failing with ENOSPC. This causes ->write_iter() to fail. However, it was returning wreq->transferred, i.e. LONG_MAX, rather than an error (because it thought the amount transferred was non-zero) and iter_file_splice_write() would then try to clean up that amount of pipe bufferage - leading to an oops when it overran. The kernel log showed:

CIFS: VFS: Send error in write = -28

followed by:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000008

with:

RIP: 0010:iter_file_splice_write+0x3a4/0x520 do_splice+0x197/0x4e0

or:

RIP: 0010:pipe_buf_release (include/linux/pipe_fs_i.h:282) iter_file_splice_write (fs/splice.c:755)

Also put a warning check into splice to announce if ->write_iter() returned that it had written more than it was asked to.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.12.44, 6.16.4, 6.17
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.48-1
  • linux Debian 14 6.16.5-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-39723

  • kernel-rt Linux Micro 6.2 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-64kb SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-source SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-default SLES 16.0, SLE High Availability Extension 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2 +1 more 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1.160000.2.4
  • kernel-syms SLES 16.0, Linux Micro Extras 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-obs-qa SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:21074-1SUSE-SU-2025:21139-1SUSE-SU-2026:20560-1SUSE-SU-2025:21179-1

  • kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.6.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2025:20081-1

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-2025-39723 updated cvss 6.4

kernel: netfs: Fix unbuffered write error handling

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    affected: no fix available
  • 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
    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

0.24% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 15% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.1 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H
NVD 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

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