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CVE-2025-38207 — linux / linux_kernel

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

mm: fix uprobe pte be overwritten when expanding vma

Patch series "Fix uprobe pte be overwritten when expanding vma".

This patch (of 4):

We encountered a BUG alert triggered by Syzkaller as follows: BUG: Bad rss-counter state mm:00000000b4a60fca type:MM_ANONPAGES val:1

And we can reproduce it with the following steps:

  1. register uprobe on file at zero offset
  2. mmap the file at zero offset: addr1 = mmap(NULL, 2 * 4096, PROT_NONE, MAP_PRIVATE, fd, 0);
  3. mremap part of vma1 to new vma2: addr2 = mremap(addr1, 4096, 2 * 4096, MREMAP_MAYMOVE);
  4. mremap back to orig addr1: mremap(addr2, 4096, 4096, MREMAP_MAYMOVE | MREMAP_FIXED, addr1);

In step 3, the vma1 range [addr1, addr1 + 4096] will be remap to new vma2 with range [addr2, addr2 + 8192], and remap uprobe anon page from the vma1 to vma2, then unmap the vma1 range [addr1, addr1 + 4096].

In step 4, the vma2 range [addr2, addr2 + 4096] will be remap back to the addr range [addr1, addr1 + 4096]. Since the addr range [addr1 + 4096, addr1 + 8192] still maps the file, it will take vma_merge_new_range to expand the range, and then do uprobe_mmap in vma_complete. Since the merged vma pgoff is also zero offset, it will install uprobe anon page to the merged vma. However, the upcomming move_page_tables step, which use set_pte_at to remap the vma2 uprobe pte to the merged vma, will overwrite the newly uprobe pte in the merged vma, and lead that pte to be orphan.

Since the uprobe pte will be remapped to the merged vma, we can remove the unnecessary uprobe_mmap upon merged vma.

This problem was first found in linux-6.6.y and also exists in the community syzkaller: https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/T/

  • Published: Jul 4, 2025
  • Updated: Nov 19, 2025
  • CVE: CVE-2025-38207
  • Severity: Medium
  • Exploit:
  • CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: Medium
  • Score: 5.5
  • AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N

No CWE or OWASP classifications available.

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