CVE-2025-38165

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

bpf, sockmap: Fix panic when calling skb_linearize

The panic can be reproduced by executing the command: ./bench sockmap -c 2 -p 1 -a –rx-verdict-ingress –rx-strp 100000

Then a kernel panic was captured:

[ 657.460555] kernel BUG at net/core/skbuff.c:2178! [ 657.462680] Tainted: [W]=WARN [ 657.463287] Workqueue: events sk_psock_backlog … [ 657.469610] [ 657.469738] ? die+0x36/0x90 [ 657.469916] ? do_trap+0x1d0/0x270 [ 657.470118] ? pskb_expand_head+0x612/0xf40 [ 657.470376] ? pskb_expand_head+0x612/0xf40 [ 657.470620] ? do_error_trap+0xa3/0x170 [ 657.470846] ? pskb_expand_head+0x612/0xf40 [ 657.471092] ? handle_invalid_op+0x2c/0x40 [ 657.471335] ? pskb_expand_head+0x612/0xf40 [ 657.471579] ? exc_invalid_op+0x2d/0x40 [ 657.471805] ? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x1a/0x20 [ 657.472052] ? pskb_expand_head+0xd1/0xf40 [ 657.472292] ? pskb_expand_head+0x612/0xf40 [ 657.472540] ? lock_acquire+0x18f/0x4e0 [ 657.472766] ? find_held_lock+0x2d/0x110 [ 657.472999] ? __pfx_pskb_expand_head+0x10/0x10 [ 657.473263] ? __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x5b/0x470 [ 657.473537] ? __pfx___lock_release.isra.0+0x10/0x10 [ 657.473826] __pskb_pull_tail+0xfd/0x1d20 [ 657.474062] ? __kasan_slab_alloc+0x4e/0x90 [ 657.474707] sk_psock_skb_ingress_enqueue+0x3bf/0x510 [ 657.475392] ? __kasan_kmalloc+0xaa/0xb0 [ 657.476010] sk_psock_backlog+0x5cf/0xd70 [ 657.476637] process_one_work+0x858/0x1a20

The panic originates from the assertion BUG_ON(skb_shared(skb)) in skb_linearize(). A previous commit(see Fixes tag) introduced skb_get() to avoid race conditions between skb operations in the backlog and skb release in the recvmsg path. However, this caused the panic to always occur when skb_linearize is executed.

The –rx-strp 100000 parameter forces the RX path to use the strparser module which aggregates data until it reaches 100KB before calling sockmap logic. The 100KB payload exceeds MAX_MSG_FRAGS, triggering skb_linearize.

To fix this issue, just move skb_get into sk_psock_skb_ingress_enqueue.

sk_psock_backlog: sk_psock_handle_skb skb_get(skb) <== we move it into sk_psock_skb_ingress_enqueue sk_psock_skb_ingress____________ ↓ | | → sk_psock_skb_ingress_self | sk_psock_skb_ingress_enqueue sk_psock_verdict_apply_________________↑ skb_linearize

Note that for verdict_apply path, the skb_get operation is unnecessary so we add take_ref param to control its behavior.

Affected Software

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3d25fa2d7f127348c818e1dab9e58534f7ac56cc
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5ca2e29f6834c64c0e5a9ccf1278c21fb49b827e
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9718ba6490732dbe70190d42c21deb1440834402
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/db1d15a26f21f97459508c42ae87cabe8d3afc3b
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e9c1299d813fc04668042690f2c3cc76d013959a