Vulnerability Database

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Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2025-38377 — linux / linux_kernel

Use After Free

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

rose: fix dangling neighbour pointers in rose_rt_device_down()

There are two bugs in rose_rt_device_down() that can cause use-after-free:

  1. The loop bound t->count is modified within the loop, which can cause the loop to terminate early and miss some entries.

  2. When removing an entry from the neighbour array, the subsequent entries are moved up to fill the gap, but the loop index i is still incremented, causing the next entry to be skipped.

For example, if a node has three neighbours (A, A, B) with count=3 and A is being removed, the second A is not checked.

i=0: (A, A, B) -> (A, B) with count=2 ^ checked i=1: (A, B) -> (A, B) with count=2 ^ checked (B, not A!) i=2: (doesn't occur because i < count is false)

This leaves the second A in the array with count=2, but the rose_neigh structure has been freed. Code that accesses these entries assumes that the first count entries are valid pointers, causing a use-after-free when it accesses the dangling pointer.

Fix both issues by iterating over the array in reverse order with a fixed loop bound. This ensures that all entries are examined and that the removal of an entry doesn't affect subsequent iterations.

  • Published: Jul 25, 2025
  • Updated: Dec 19, 2025
  • CVE: CVE-2025-38377
  • Severity: High
  • Exploit:
  • CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: High
  • Score: 7.8
  • AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CWEs:

Frequently Asked Questions

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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.

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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.

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