CVE-2025-38614 - CVE House
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Status published Unknown CVE-2025-38614

eventpoll: Fix semi-unbounded recursion

Vulnerability Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: eventpoll: Fix semi-unbounded recursion Ensure that epoll instances can never form a graph deeper than EP_MAX_NESTS+1 links. Currently, ep_loop_check_proc() ensures that the graph is loop-free and does some recursion depth checks, but those recursion depth checks don't limit the depth of the resulting tree for two reasons: - They don't look upwards in the tree. - If there are multiple downwards paths of different lengths, only one of the paths is actually considered for the depth check since commit 28d82dc1c4ed ("epoll: limit paths"). Essentially, the current recursion depth check in ep_loop_check_proc() just serves to prevent it from recursing too deeply while checking for loops. A more thorough check is done in reverse_path_check() after the new graph edge has already been created; this checks, among other things, that no paths going upwards from any non-epoll file with a length of more than 5 edges exist. However, this check does not apply to non-epoll files. As a result, it is possible to recurse to a depth of at least roughly 500, tested on v6.15. (I am unsure if deeper recursion is possible; and this may have changed with commit 8c44dac8add7 ("eventpoll: Fix priority inversion problem").) To fix it: 1. In ep_loop_check_proc(), note the subtree depth of each visited node, and use subtree depths for the total depth calculation even when a subtree has already been visited. 2. Add ep_get_upwards_depth_proc() for similarly determining the maximum depth of an upwards walk. 3. In ep_loop_check(), use these values to limit the total path length between epoll nodes to EP_MAX_NESTS edges.

Impact Analysis

Refer to official advisory for detailed impact metrics.

Remediation

Ensure systems are updated to the latest vendor-supplied patch levels.

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Credits & Attribution

No credits recorded in the NVD database.

Affected Vendor

Affected Software

Linux
Vulnerable Versions:
22bacca48a1755f79b7e0f192ddb9fbb7fc6e64e, 8216e1a0d47cae06a75c42346f19dffe14e42d57, 28a92748aa4bc57d35e7b079498b0ac2e7610a37, 7eebcd4792c5a341559aed327b6afecbb1c46402, 0eccd188cfeaf857a26f2d72941d27d298cf6a54, a72affdbb09f3f24f64ffcbbdf62c2e57c58f379, 2.6.32.30, 2.6.33.8, 2.6.34.10, 2.6.35.12, 2.6.37.3, 2.6.38, 0, 5.15.190, 6.1.149, 6.6.103, 6.12.43, 6.15.11, 6.16.1, 6.17

Timeline

Official Publish: August 19th, 2025
Last Modified: July 14th, 2026
Added to House: July 22nd, 2026

CVSS Vectors

No vector data available

Weaknesses (CWE)

No CWE data available

MITRE ATT&CK TTPs

No associated TTPs found for this vulnerability.