Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2025-40245

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: nios2: ensure that memblock.current_limit is set when setting pfn limits On nios2, with CONFIG_FLATMEM set, the kernel relies on memblock_get_current_limit() to determine the limits of mem_map, in particular for max_low_pfn. Unfortunately, memblock.current_limit is only default initialized to MEMBLOCK_ALLOC_ANYWHERE at this point of the bootup, potentially leading to situations where max_low_pfn can erroneously exceed the value of max_pfn and, thus, the valid range of available DRAM. This can in turn cause kernel-level paging failures, e.g.: [ 76.900000] Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address 20303000 [ 76.900000] ea = c0080890, ra = c000462c, cause = 14 [ 76.900000] Kernel panic - not syncing: Oops [ 76.900000] ---[ end Kernel panic - not syncing: Oops ]--- This patch fixes this by pre-calculating memblock.current_limit based on the upper limits of the available memory ranges via adjust_lowmem_bounds, a simplified version of the equivalent implementation within the arm architecture.

EPSS: 0.002 (8.2th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

  • Linux — versions 7f7bc20bc41a4fbcd2db75b375ac95e5faf958ae, 5.12, 0

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-40245?
CVE-2025-40245 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 7.8/10. Published 2025-12-04.
How severe is CVE-2025-40245?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.8 out of 10.