CVE-2025-38627: linux Use After Free

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2025-38627 is a high (CVSS 7.8) Use After Free vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.17% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 5.8% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 22-08-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 05-08-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: f2fs: compress: fix UAF of f2fs_inode_info in f2fs_free_dic The decompress_io_ctx may be released asynchronously after I/O completion. If this file is deleted immediately after read, and the kworker of processing post_read_wq has not been executed yet due to high workloads, It is possible that the inode(f2fs_inode_info) is evicted and freed before it is used f2fs_free_dic. The UAF case as below: Thread A Thread B - f2fs_decompress_end_io - f2fs_put_dic - queue_work add free_dic work to post_read_wq - do_unlink - iput - evict - call_rcu This file is deleted after read. Thread C kworker to process post_read_wq - rcu_do_batch - f2fs_free_inode - kmem_cache_free inode is freed by rcu - process_scheduled_works - f2fs_late_free_dic - f2fs_free_dic - f2fs_release_decomp_mem read (dic->inode)->i_compress_algorithm This patch store compress_algorithm and sbi in dic to avoid inode UAF. In addition, the previous solution is deprecated in [1] may cause system hang. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/c36ab955-c8db-4a8b-a9d0-f07b5f426c3f@kernel.org

• CWE-416Use After FreeThe product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.