CVE-2025-38255

lib/group_cpus: fix NULL pointer dereference from group_cpus_evenly()

published July 9, 2025

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
5.5
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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

lib/group_cpus: fix NULL pointer dereference from group_cpus_evenly()

While testing null_blk with configfs, echo 0 > poll_queues will trigger

following panic:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000010

Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI

CPU: 27 UID: 0 PID: 920 Comm: bash Not tainted 6.15.0-02023-gadbdb95c8696-dirty #1238 PREEMPT(undef)

Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.1-2.fc37 04/01/2014

RIP: 0010:__bitmap_or+0x48/0x70

Call Trace:

<TASK>

__group_cpus_evenly+0x822/0x8c0

group_cpus_evenly+0x2d9/0x490

blk_mq_map_queues+0x1e/0x110

null_map_queues+0xc9/0x170 [null_blk]

blk_mq_update_queue_map+0xdb/0x160

blk_mq_update_nr_hw_queues+0x22b/0x560

nullb_update_nr_hw_queues+0x71/0xf0 [null_blk]

nullb_device_poll_queues_store+0xa4/0x130 [null_blk]

configfs_write_iter+0x109/0x1d0

vfs_write+0x26e/0x6f0

ksys_write+0x79/0x180

__x64_sys_write+0x1d/0x30

x64_sys_call+0x45c4/0x45f0

do_syscall_64+0xa5/0x240

entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e

Root cause is that numgrps is set to 0, and ZERO_SIZE_PTR is returned from

kcalloc(), and later ZERO_SIZE_PTR will be deferenced.

Fix the problem by checking numgrps first in group_cpus_evenly(), and

return NULL directly if numgrps is zero.

[[email protected]: also fix the non-SMP version]

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00166 · 5.5th percentile
Published
2025-07-09T10:42Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 09 JUL 10:42Z
    lib/group_cpus: fix NULL pointer dereference from group_cpus_evenly()
    cvelistv5