CVE-2025-39684

MEDIUM

Linux Kernel < 5.15.190 - Use of Uninitialized Resource

Title source: rule
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: comedi: Fix use of uninitialized memory in do_insn_ioctl() and do_insnlist_ioctl() syzbot reports a KMSAN kernel-infoleak in `do_insn_ioctl()`. A kernel buffer is allocated to hold `insn->n` samples (each of which is an `unsigned int`). For some instruction types, `insn->n` samples are copied back to user-space, unless an error code is being returned. The problem is that not all the instruction handlers that need to return data to userspace fill in the whole `insn->n` samples, so that there is an information leak. There is a similar syzbot report for `do_insnlist_ioctl()`, although it does not have a reproducer for it at the time of writing. One culprit is `insn_rw_emulate_bits()` which is used as the handler for `INSN_READ` or `INSN_WRITE` instructions for subdevices that do not have a specific handler for that instruction, but do have an `INSN_BITS` handler. For `INSN_READ` it only fills in at most 1 sample, so if `insn->n` is greater than 1, the remaining `insn->n - 1` samples copied to userspace will be uninitialized kernel data. Another culprit is `vm80xx_ai_insn_read()` in the "vm80xx" driver. It never returns an error, even if it fails to fill the buffer. Fix it in `do_insn_ioctl()` and `do_insnlist_ioctl()` by making sure that uninitialized parts of the allocated buffer are zeroed before handling each instruction. Thanks to Arnaud Lecomte for their fix to `do_insn_ioctl()`. That fix replaced the call to `kmalloc_array()` with `kcalloc()`, but it is not always necessary to clear the whole buffer.

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0002
EPSS Percentile 4.0%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Details

CWE
CWE-908
Status published
Products (8)
debian/debian_linux 11.0
linux/Kernel 2.6.29 - 5.15.190linux
linux/Kernel 5.16.0 - 6.1.149linux
linux/Kernel 6.13.0 - 6.16.4linux
linux/Kernel 6.2.0 - 6.6.103linux
linux/Kernel 6.7.0 - 6.12.44linux
linux/linux_kernel 6.17 rc1 (2 CPE variants)
linux/linux_kernel 2.6.29 - 5.15.190
Published Sep 05, 2025
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026