CVE-2025-38687 - CVE House
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Status published Unknown CVE-2025-38687

comedi: fix race between polling and detaching

Vulnerability Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: comedi: fix race between polling and detaching syzbot reports a use-after-free in comedi in the below link, which is due to comedi gladly removing the allocated async area even though poll requests are still active on the wait_queue_head inside of it. This can cause a use-after-free when the poll entries are later triggered or removed, as the memory for the wait_queue_head has been freed. We need to check there are no tasks queued on any of the subdevices' wait queues before allowing the device to be detached by the `COMEDI_DEVCONFIG` ioctl. Tasks will read-lock `dev->attach_lock` before adding themselves to the subdevice wait queue, so fix the problem in the `COMEDI_DEVCONFIG` ioctl handler by write-locking `dev->attach_lock` before checking that all of the subdevices are safe to be deleted. This includes testing for any sleepers on the subdevices' wait queues. It remains locked until the device has been detached. This requires the `comedi_device_detach()` function to be refactored slightly, moving the bulk of it into new function `comedi_device_detach_locked()`. Note that the refactor of `comedi_device_detach()` results in `comedi_device_cancel_all()` now being called while `dev->attach_lock` is write-locked, which wasn't the case previously, but that does not matter. Thanks to Jens Axboe for diagnosing the problem and co-developing this patch.

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:
2f3fdcd7ce935f6f2899ceab57dc8fe5286db3e1, 3.14, 0, 5.4.297, 5.10.241, 5.15.190, 6.1.149, 6.6.103, 6.12.43, 6.15.11, 6.16.2, 6.17

Timeline

Official Publish: September 4th, 2025
Last Modified: May 12th, 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.