CVE-2025-38396

medium

Published 2025-11-11 · Modified 2025-11-19

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CVSS v3

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CVSS v4 NEW

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not yet in upstream

VIR risk

5.5

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fs: export anon_inode_make_secure_inode() and fix secretmem LSM bypass Export anon_inode_make_secure_inode() to allow KVM guest_memfd to create anonymous inodes with proper security context. This replaces the current pattern of calling alloc_anon_inode() followed by inode_init_security_anon() for creating security context manually. This change also fixes a security regression in secretmem where the S_PRIVATE flag was not cleared after alloc_anon_inode(), causing LSM/SELinux checks to be bypassed for secretmem file descriptors. As guest_memfd currently resides in the KVM module, we need to export this symbol for use outside the core kernel. In the future, guest_memfd might be moved to core-mm, at which point the symbols no longer would have to be exported. When/if that happens is still unclear.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

20%

Patch ETA

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Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

OS impact

OS	Version	Status	Fixed in
rhel	9	fixed
sles		affected
rocky	9	fixed
debian	bookworm	fixed	`6.1.147-1`
debian	bullseye	fixed	`0`
debian	forky	fixed	`6.12.37-1`
debian	sid	fixed	`6.12.37-1`
debian	trixie	fixed	`6.12.37-1`
almalinux	9	fixed	`kernel-doc-5.14.0-611.5.1.el9_7.noarch.rpm`

References

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.