CVE-2025-38250

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

Bluetooth: hci_core: Fix use-after-free in vhci_flush()

syzbot reported use-after-free in vhci_flush() without repro. [0]

From the splat, a thread close()d a vhci file descriptor while its device was being used by iotcl() on another thread.

Once the last fd refcnt is released, vhci_release() calls hci_unregister_dev(), hci_free_dev(), and kfree() for struct vhci_data, which is set to hci_dev->dev->driver_data.

The problem is that there is no synchronisation after unlinking hdev from hci_dev_list in hci_unregister_dev(). There might be another thread still accessing the hdev which was fetched before the unlink operation.

We can use SRCU for such synchronisation.

Lets run hci_dev_reset() under SRCU and wait for its completion in hci_unregister_dev().

Another option would be to restore hci_dev->destruct(), which was removed in commit 587ae086f6e4 (Bluetooth: Remove unused hci-destruct cb). However, this would not be a good solution, as we should not run hci_unregister_dev() while there are in-flight ioctl() requests, which could lead to another data-race KCSAN splat.

Note that other drivers seem to have the same problem, for exmaple, virtbt_remove().

[0]: BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in skb_queue_empty_lockless include/linux/skbuff.h:1891 [inline] BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in skb_queue_purge_reason+0x99/0x360 net/core/skbuff.c:3937 Read of size 8 at addr ffff88807cb8d858 by task syz.1.219/6718

CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 6718 Comm: syz.1.219 Not tainted 6.16.0-rc1-syzkaller-00196-g08207f42d3ff #0 PREEMPT(full) Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 05/07/2025 Call Trace: dump_stack_lvl+0x189/0x250 lib/dump_stack.c:120 print_address_description mm/kasan/report.c:408 [inline] print_report+0xd2/0x2b0 mm/kasan/report.c:521 kasan_report+0x118/0x150 mm/kasan/report.c:634 skb_queue_empty_lockless include/linux/skbuff.h:1891 [inline] skb_queue_purge_reason+0x99/0x360 net/core/skbuff.c:3937 skb_queue_purge include/linux/skbuff.h:3368 [inline] vhci_flush+0x44/0x50 drivers/bluetooth/hci_vhci.c:69 hci_dev_do_reset net/bluetooth/hci_core.c:552 [inline] hci_dev_reset+0x420/0x5c0 net/bluetooth/hci_core.c:592 sock_do_ioctl+0xd9/0x300 net/socket.c:1190 sock_ioctl+0x576/0x790 net/socket.c:1311 vfs_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:51 [inline] __do_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:907 [inline] __se_sys_ioctl+0xf9/0x170 fs/ioctl.c:893 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:63 [inline] do_syscall_64+0xfa/0x3b0 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:94 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f RIP: 0033:0x7fcf5b98e929 Code: ff ff c3 66 2e 0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 00 0f 1f 40 00 48 89 f8 48 89 f7 48 89 d6 48 89 ca 4d 89 c2 4d 89 c8 4c 8b 4c 24 08 0f 05 <48> 3d 01 f0 ff ff 73 01 c3 48 c7 c1 a8 ff ff ff f7 d8 64 89 01 48 RSP: 002b:00007fcf5c7b9038 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 0000000000000010 RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 00007fcf5bbb6160 RCX: 00007fcf5b98e929 RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 00000000400448cb RDI: 0000000000000009 RBP: 00007fcf5ba10b39 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000 R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000000000 R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 00007fcf5bbb6160 R15: 00007ffd6353d528

Allocated by task 6535: kasan_save_stack mm/kasan/common.c:47 [inline] kasan_save_track+0x3e/0x80 mm/kasan/common.c:68 poison_kmalloc_redzone mm/kasan/common.c:377 [inline] __kasan_kmalloc+0x93/0xb0 mm/kasan/common.c:394 kasan_kmalloc include/linux/kasan.h:260 [inline] __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x230/0x3d0 mm/slub.c:4359 kmalloc_noprof include/linux/slab.h:905 [inline] kzalloc_noprof include/linux/slab.h:1039 [inline] vhci_open+0x57/0x360 drivers/bluetooth/hci_vhci.c:635 misc_open+0x2bc/0x330 drivers/char/misc.c:161 chrdev_open+0x4c9/0x5e0 fs/char_dev.c:414 do_dentry_open+0xdf0/0x1970 fs/open.c:964 vfs_open+0x3b/0x340 fs/open.c:1094 do_open fs/namei.c:3887 [inline] path_openat+0x2ee5/0x3830 fs/name —truncated—

Weakness

The 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.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0e5c144c557df910ab64d9c25d06399a9a735e65
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/1d6123102e9fbedc8d25bf4731da6d513173e49e
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bc0819a25e04cd68ef3568cfa51b63118fea39a7
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ce23b73f0f27e2dbeb81734a79db710f05aa33c6