How should we interpret CVSS severity scores?

CVSS estimates technical severity, but it does not automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, asset criticality, known exploitation, and whether compensating controls exist. A Medium CVSS on an exposed production system can be more urgent than a Critical on an isolated non-production host.

Vulnerability Database

Q: What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

Q: What's the difference between a vulnerability, an exploit, and a zero-day?

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. Risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Q: Why do vulnerabilities keep reappearing in our environment?

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete asset discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host.

Q: How do we prioritize remediation without burning out the team?

Use a repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress so remediation is steady, not reactive.

Q: How can SynScan help reduce vulnerability risk over time?

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.

373,546

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2025-38223 — linux / linux_kernel

Reachable Assertion

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

ceph: avoid kernel BUG for encrypted inode with unaligned file size

The generic/397 test hits a BUG_ON for the case of encrypted inode with unaligned file size (for example, 33K or 1K):

[ 877.737811] run fstests generic/397 at 2025-01-03 12:34:40 [ 877.875761] libceph: mon0 (2)127.0.0.1:40674 session established [ 877.876130] libceph: client4614 fsid 19b90bca-f1ae-47a6-93dd-0b03ee637949 [ 877.991965] libceph: mon0 (2)127.0.0.1:40674 session established [ 877.992334] libceph: client4617 fsid 19b90bca-f1ae-47a6-93dd-0b03ee637949 [ 878.017234] libceph: mon0 (2)127.0.0.1:40674 session established [ 878.017594] libceph: client4620 fsid 19b90bca-f1ae-47a6-93dd-0b03ee637949 [ 878.031394] xfs_io (pid 18988) is setting deprecated v1 encryption policy; recommend upgrading to v2. [ 878.054528] libceph: mon0 (2)127.0.0.1:40674 session established [ 878.054892] libceph: client4623 fsid 19b90bca-f1ae-47a6-93dd-0b03ee637949 [ 878.070287] libceph: mon0 (2)127.0.0.1:40674 session established [ 878.070704] libceph: client4626 fsid 19b90bca-f1ae-47a6-93dd-0b03ee637949 [ 878.264586] libceph: mon0 (2)127.0.0.1:40674 session established [ 878.265258] libceph: client4629 fsid 19b90bca-f1ae-47a6-93dd-0b03ee637949 [ 878.374578] -----------[ cut here ]------------ [ 878.374586] kernel BUG at net/ceph/messenger.c:1070! [ 878.375150] Oops: invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI [ 878.378145] CPU: 2 UID: 0 PID: 4759 Comm: kworker/2:9 Not tainted 6.13.0-rc5+ #1 [ 878.378969] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.16.3-0-ga6ed6b701f0a-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 [ 878.380167] Workqueue: ceph-msgr ceph_con_workfn [ 878.381639] RIP: 0010:ceph_msg_data_cursor_init+0x42/0x50 [ 878.382152] Code: 89 17 48 8b 46 70 55 48 89 47 08 c7 47 18 00 00 00 00 48 89 e5 e8 de cc ff ff 5d 31 c0 31 d2 31 f6 31 ff c3 cc cc cc cc 0f 0b <0f> 0b 0f 0b 66 2e 0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 00 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 [ 878.383928] RSP: 0018:ffffb4ffc7cbbd28 EFLAGS: 00010287 [ 878.384447] RAX: ffffffff82bb9ac0 RBX: ffff981390c2f1f8 RCX: 0000000000000000 [ 878.385129] RDX: 0000000000009000 RSI: ffff981288232b58 RDI: ffff981390c2f378 [ 878.385839] RBP: ffffb4ffc7cbbe18 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000 [ 878.386539] R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: ffff981390c2f030 [ 878.387203] R13: ffff981288232b58 R14: 0000000000000029 R15: 0000000000000001 [ 878.387877] FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff9814b7900000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [ 878.388663] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [ 878.389212] CR2: 00005e106a0554e0 CR3: 0000000112bf0001 CR4: 0000000000772ef0 [ 878.389921] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 [ 878.390620] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 [ 878.391307] PKRU: 55555554 [ 878.391567] Call Trace: [ 878.391807] <TASK> [ 878.392021] ? show_regs+0x71/0x90 [ 878.392391] ? die+0x38/0xa0 [ 878.392667] ? do_trap+0xdb/0x100 [ 878.392981] ? do_error_trap+0x75/0xb0 [ 878.393372] ? ceph_msg_data_cursor_init+0x42/0x50 [ 878.393842] ? exc_invalid_op+0x53/0x80 [ 878.394232] ? ceph_msg_data_cursor_init+0x42/0x50 [ 878.394694] ? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x1b/0x20 [ 878.395099] ? ceph_msg_data_cursor_init+0x42/0x50 [ 878.395583] ? ceph_con_v2_try_read+0xd16/0x2220 [ 878.396027] ? _raw_spin_unlock+0xe/0x40 [ 878.396428] ? raw_spin_rq_unlock+0x10/0x40 [ 878.396842] ? finish_task_switch.isra.0+0x97/0x310 [ 878.397338] ? __schedule+0x44b/0x16b0 [ 878.397738] ceph_con_workfn+0x326/0x750 [ 878.398121] process_one_work+0x188/0x3d0 [ 878.398522] ? __pfx_worker_thread+0x10/0x10 [ 878.398929] worker_thread+0x2b5/0x3c0 [ 878.399310] ? __pfx_worker_thread+0x10/0x10 [ 878.399727] kthread+0xe1/0x120 [ 878.400031] ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 [ 878.400431] ret_from_fork+0x43/0x70 [ 878.400771] ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 [ 878.401127] ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 [ 878.401543] </TASK> [ 878.401760] Modules l ---truncated---

Published: Jul 4, 2025
Updated: Nov 19, 2025
CVE: CVE-2025-38223
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:N/A:H

CWEs:

CWE-617

Affected Software
References

Software	From	Fixed in
linux / linux_kernel	6.12	6.12.35
linux / linux_kernel	6.13	6.15.4

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.