Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2025-40231

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: vsock: fix lock inversion in vsock_assign_transport() Syzbot reported a potential lock inversion deadlock between vsock_register_mutex and sk_lock-AF_VSOCK when vsock_linger() is called. The issue was introduced by commit 687aa0c5581b ("vsock: Fix transport_* TOCTOU") which added vsock_register_mutex locking in vsock_assign_transport() around the transport->release() call, that can call vsock_linger(). vsock_assign_transport() can be called with sk_lock held. vsock_linger() calls sk_wait_event() that temporarily releases and re-acquires sk_lock. During this window, if another thread hold vsock_register_mutex while trying to acquire sk_lock, a circular dependency is created. Fix this by releasing vsock_register_mutex before calling transport->release() and vsock_deassign_transport(). This is safe because we don't need to hold vsock_register_mutex while releasing the old transport, and we ensure the new transport won't disappear by obtaining a module reference first via try_module_get().

Published 2025-12-04 · last modified 2026-06-17.