CVE-2025-38192: linux NULL Pointer Dereference

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2025-38192 is a high (CVSS 7.8) NULL Pointer Dereference vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 9.7% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 04-07-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 15-10-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: clear the dst when changing skb protocol A not-so-careful NAT46 BPF program can crash the kernel if it indiscriminately flips ingress packets from v4 to v6: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000000 ip6_rcv_core (net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:190:20) ipv6_rcv (net/ipv6/ip6_input.c:306:8) process_backlog (net/core/dev.c:6186:4) napi_poll (net/core/dev.c:6906:9) net_rx_action (net/core/dev.c:7028:13) do_softirq (kernel/softirq.c:462:3) netif_rx (net/core/dev.c:5326:3) dev_loopback_xmit (net/core/dev.c:4015:2) ip_mc_finish_output (net/ipv4/ip_output.c:363:8) NF_HOOK (./include/linux/netfilter.h:314:9) ip_mc_output (net/ipv4/ip_output.c:400:5) dst_output (./include/net/dst.h:459:9) ip_local_out (net/ipv4/ip_output.c:130:9) ip_send_skb (net/ipv4/ip_output.c:1496:8) udp_send_skb (net/ipv4/udp.c:1040:8) udp_sendmsg (net/ipv4/udp.c:1328:10) The output interface has a 4->6 program attached at ingress. We try to loop the multicast skb back to the sending socket. Ingress BPF runs as part of netif_rx(), pushes a valid v6 hdr and changes skb->protocol to v6. We enter ip6_rcv_core which tries to use skb_dst(). But the dst is still an IPv4 one left after IPv4 mcast output. Clear the dst in all BPF helpers which change the protocol. Try to preserve metadata dsts, those may carry non-routing metadata.

• CWE-476NULL Pointer DereferenceThe product dereferences a pointer that it expects to be valid but is NULL.