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Fencer Vulns
no cvss —

CVE-2025-68375 json

perf/x86: Fix NULL event access and potential PEBS record loss

published 2025-12-24 10 mo ago modified 2026-10-13 26 d ago also EUVD-2025-205079

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 8%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

perf/x86: Fix NULL event access and potential PEBS record loss

When intel_pmu_drain_pebs_icl() is called to drain PEBS records, the perf_event_overflow() could be called to process the last PEBS record.

While perf_event_overflow() could trigger the interrupt throttle and stop all events of the group, like what the below call-chain shows.

perf_event_overflow() -> __perf_event_overflow() ->__perf_event_account_interrupt() -> perf_event_throttle_group() -> perf_event_throttle() -> event->pmu->stop() -> x86_pmu_stop()

The side effect of stopping the events is that all corresponding event pointers in cpuc->events[] array are cleared to NULL.

Assume there are two PEBS events (event a and event b) in a group. When intel_pmu_drain_pebs_icl() calls perf_event_overflow() to process the last PEBS record of PEBS event a, interrupt throttle is triggered and all pointers of event a and event b are cleared to NULL. Then intel_pmu_drain_pebs_icl() tries to process the last PEBS record of event b and encounters NULL pointer access.

To avoid this issue, move cpuc->events[] clearing from x86_pmu_stop() to x86_pmu_del(). It's safe since cpuc->active_mask or cpuc->pebs_enabled is always checked before access the event pointer from cpuc->events[].

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.17.13, 6.18.2, 6.19
  • linux Debian 14 6.17.13-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68375

  • linux Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-19.19
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1009.9
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1009.9
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1010.10
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1010.10
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-19.19.1
  • linux-oracle Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1009.9
  • linux-aws-6.17 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.17.0-1009.9~24.04.2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-68375

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-source-longterm openSUSE Tumbleweed 6.18.16-1.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Tumbleweed 6.18.5-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:10301-1openSUSE-SU-2026:10039-1

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-2025-68375 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: Linux kernel: Denial of Service due to null pointer dereference in perf/x86 PEBS processing

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • 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

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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