CVE-2025-38528

CVE-2025-38528

High · published August 16, 2025

CVSS v3.1
7.1
EPSS
0%
Percentile
6.2
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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

bpf: Reject %p% format string in bprintf-like helpers

static const char fmt[] = "%p%";

bpf_trace_printk(fmt, sizeof(fmt));

The above BPF program isn't rejected and causes a kernel warning at

runtime:

Please remove unsupported %\x00 in format string

WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 7244 at lib/vsprintf.c:2680 format_decode+0x49c/0x5d0

This happens because bpf_bprintf_prepare skips over the second %,

detected as punctuation, while processing %p. This patch fixes it by

not skipping over punctuation. %\x00 is then processed in the next

iteration and rejected.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
7.1 · HIGH
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00172 · 6.2th percentile
Published
2025-08-16T16:15Z
Affected products (12)
ProductVersionsFixed in
linux/linux_kernel≥ 6.13, < 6.15.86.15.8
linux/linux_kernelall versions—
linux/linux_kernelall versions—
linux/linux_kernelall versions—
linux/linux_kernelall versions—
linux/linux_kernelall versions—
linux/linux_kernelall versions—
linux/linux_kernel≥ 5.13, < 5.15.1905.15.190
linux/linux_kernel≥ 5.16, < 6.1.1476.1.147
linux/linux_kernel≥ 6.2, < 6.6.1006.6.100
linux/linux_kernel≥ 6.7, < 6.12.406.12.40
debian/debian_linuxall versions—
References (7)
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 16 AUG 11:12Z
    bpf: Reject %p% format string in bprintf-like helpers
    cvelistv5