Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2025-39950 json

net/tcp: Fix a NULL pointer dereference when using TCP-AO with TCP_REPAIR

published 2025-10-04 13 mo ago modified 2026-10-19 20 d ago also EUVD-2025-32392

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 4%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

net/tcp: Fix a NULL pointer dereference when using TCP-AO with TCP_REPAIR

A NULL pointer dereference can occur in tcp_ao_finish_connect() during a connect() system call on a socket with a TCP-AO key added and TCP_REPAIR enabled.

The function is called with skb being NULL and attempts to dereference it on tcp_hdr(skb)->seq without a prior skb validation.

Fix this by checking if skb is NULL before dereferencing it.

The commentary is taken from bpf_skops_established(), which is also called in the same flow. Unlike the function being patched, bpf_skops_established() validates the skb before dereferencing it.

int main(void){ struct sockaddr_in sockaddr; struct tcp_ao_add tcp_ao; int sk; int one = 1;

memset(&sockaddr,'\0',sizeof(sockaddr)); memset(&tcp_ao,'\0',sizeof(tcp_ao));

sk = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);

sockaddr.sin_family = AF_INET;

memcpy(tcp_ao.alg_name,"cmac(aes128)",12); memcpy(tcp_ao.key,"ABCDEFGHABCDEFGH",16); tcp_ao.keylen = 16;

memcpy(&tcp_ao.addr,&sockaddr,sizeof(sockaddr));

setsockopt(sk, IPPROTO_TCP, TCP_AO_ADD_KEY, &tcp_ao, sizeof(tcp_ao)); setsockopt(sk, IPPROTO_TCP, TCP_REPAIR, &one, sizeof(one));

sockaddr.sin_family = AF_INET; sockaddr.sin_port = htobe16(123);

inet_aton("127.0.0.1", &sockaddr.sin_addr);

connect(sk,(struct sockaddr *)&sockaddr,sizeof(sockaddr));

return 0; }

$ gcc tcp-ao-nullptr.c -o tcp-ao-nullptr -Wall $ unshare -Urn

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 00000000000000b6 PGD 1f648d067 P4D 1f648d067 PUD 1982e8067 PMD 0 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI Hardware name: VMware, Inc. VMware Virtual Platform/440BX Desktop Reference Platform, BIOS 6.00 11/12/2020 RIP: 0010:tcp_ao_finish_connect (net/ipv4/tcp_ao.c:1182)

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.12.49, 6.16.9, 6.17
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.57-1
  • linux Debian 14 6.16.9-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-39950

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-106.106
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1050.53
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1052.55
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1048.53
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1049.49
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1051.57
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1035.38
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1050.54

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-39950

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

  • kernel-rt Linux Micro 6.2 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-64kb SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-source SLES 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2, SLES for SAP applications 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-default SLES 16.0, SLE High Availability Extension 16.0, Linux Micro 6.2 +1 more 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • 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 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-obs-qa SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:21080-1SUSE-SU-2025:21147-1SUSE-SU-2025:21180-1SUSE-SU-2026:20561-1

  • kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.7.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2025:20091-1

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-2025-39950 updated

kernel: net/tcp: Fix a NULL pointer dereference when using TCP-AO with TCP_REPAIR

  • 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

0.15% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 4% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
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
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.