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-2025-38506 — linux / linux_kernel

Improper Locking

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

KVM: Allow CPU to reschedule while setting per-page memory attributes

When running an SEV-SNP guest with a sufficiently large amount of memory (1TB+), the host can experience CPU soft lockups when running an operation in kvm_vm_set_mem_attributes() to set memory attributes on the whole range of guest memory.

watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#8 stuck for 26s! [qemu-kvm:6372] CPU: 8 UID: 0 PID: 6372 Comm: qemu-kvm Kdump: loaded Not tainted 6.15.0-rc7.20250520.el9uek.rc1.x86_64 #1 PREEMPT(voluntary) Hardware name: Oracle Corporation ORACLE SERVER E4-2c/Asm,MB Tray,2U,E4-2c, BIOS 78016600 11/13/2024 RIP: 0010:xas_create+0x78/0x1f0 Code: 00 00 00 41 80 fc 01 0f 84 82 00 00 00 ba 06 00 00 00 bd 06 00 00 00 49 8b 45 08 4d 8d 65 08 41 39 d6 73 20 83 ed 06 48 85 c0 <74> 67 48 89 c2 83 e2 03 48 83 fa 02 75 0c 48 3d 00 10 00 00 0f 87 RSP: 0018:ffffad890a34b940 EFLAGS: 00000286 RAX: ffff96f30b261daa RBX: ffffad890a34b9c8 RCX: 0000000000000000 RDX: 000000000000001e RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: 0000000000000000 RBP: 0000000000000018 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000 R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: ffffad890a356868 R13: ffffad890a356860 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: ffffad890a356868 FS: 00007f5578a2a400(0000) GS:ffff97ed317e1000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00007f015c70fb18 CR3: 00000001109fd006 CR4: 0000000000f70ef0 PKRU: 55555554 Call Trace: <TASK> xas_store+0x58/0x630 __xa_store+0xa5/0x130 xa_store+0x2c/0x50 kvm_vm_set_mem_attributes+0x343/0x710 [kvm] kvm_vm_ioctl+0x796/0xab0 [kvm] __x64_sys_ioctl+0xa3/0xd0 do_syscall_64+0x8c/0x7a0 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e RIP: 0033:0x7f5578d031bb Code: ff ff ff 85 c0 79 9b 49 c7 c4 ff ff ff ff 5b 5d 4c 89 e0 41 5c c3 66 0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 00 f3 0f 1e fa b8 10 00 00 00 0f 05 <48> 3d 01 f0 ff ff 73 01 c3 48 8b 0d 2d 4c 0f 00 f7 d8 64 89 01 48 RSP: 002b:00007ffe0a742b88 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 0000000000000010 RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 000000004020aed2 RCX: 00007f5578d031bb RDX: 00007ffe0a742c80 RSI: 000000004020aed2 RDI: 000000000000000b RBP: 0000010000000000 R08: 0000010000000000 R09: 0000017680000000 R10: 0000000000000080 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 00005575e5f95120 R13: 00007ffe0a742c80 R14: 0000000000000008 R15: 00005575e5f961e0

While looping through the range of memory setting the attributes, call cond_resched() to give the scheduler a chance to run a higher priority task on the runqueue if necessary and avoid staying in kernel mode long enough to trigger the lockup.

Published: Aug 16, 2025
Updated: Nov 20, 2025
CVE: CVE-2025-38506
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-667

Affected Software
References

Software	From	Fixed in
linux / linux_kernel	6.8	6.12.39
linux / linux_kernel	6.13	6.15.7
linux / linux_kernel	6.16-rc1	6.16-rc1.x
linux / linux_kernel	6.16-rc2	6.16-rc2.x
linux / linux_kernel	6.16-rc3	6.16-rc3.x
linux / linux_kernel	6.16-rc4	6.16-rc4.x
linux / linux_kernel	6.16-rc5	6.16-rc5.x

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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.