Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2025-38071

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/mm: Check return value from memblock_phys_alloc_range() At least with CONFIG_PHYSICAL_START=0x100000, if there is < 4 MiB of contiguous free memory available at this point, the kernel will crash and burn because memblock_phys_alloc_range() returns 0 on failure, which leads memblock_phys_free() to throw the first 4 MiB of physical memory to the wolves. At a minimum it should fail gracefully with a meaningful diagnostic, but in fact everything seems to work fine without the weird reserve allocation.

EPSS: 0.002 (5.2th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

Affected products

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-38071?
CVE-2025-38071 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2025-06-18.
How severe is CVE-2025-38071?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.
Is CVE-2025-38071 known to be exploited?
1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.