CVE-2025-38449

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

drm/gem: Acquire references on GEM handles for framebuffers

A GEM handle can be released while the GEM buffer object is attached to a DRM framebuffer. This leads to the release of the dma-buf backing the buffer object, if any. [1] Trying to use the framebuffer in further mode-setting operations leads to a segmentation fault. Most easily happens with driver that use shadow planes for vmap-ing the dma-buf during a page flip. An example is shown below.

[ 156.791968] ————[ cut here ]———— [ 156.796830] WARNING: CPU: 2 PID: 2255 at drivers/dma-buf/dma-buf.c:1527 dma_buf_vmap+0x224/0x430 […] [ 156.942028] RIP: 0010:dma_buf_vmap+0x224/0x430 [ 157.043420] Call Trace: [ 157.045898] [ 157.048030] ? show_trace_log_lvl+0x1af/0x2c0 [ 157.052436] ? show_trace_log_lvl+0x1af/0x2c0 [ 157.056836] ? show_trace_log_lvl+0x1af/0x2c0 [ 157.061253] ? drm_gem_shmem_vmap+0x74/0x710 [ 157.065567] ? dma_buf_vmap+0x224/0x430 [ 157.069446] ? __warn.cold+0x58/0xe4 [ 157.073061] ? dma_buf_vmap+0x224/0x430 [ 157.077111] ? report_bug+0x1dd/0x390 [ 157.080842] ? handle_bug+0x5e/0xa0 [ 157.084389] ? exc_invalid_op+0x14/0x50 [ 157.088291] ? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x16/0x20 [ 157.092548] ? dma_buf_vmap+0x224/0x430 [ 157.096663] ? dma_resv_get_singleton+0x6d/0x230 [ 157.101341] ? __pfx_dma_buf_vmap+0x10/0x10 [ 157.105588] ? __pfx_dma_resv_get_singleton+0x10/0x10 [ 157.110697] drm_gem_shmem_vmap+0x74/0x710 [ 157.114866] drm_gem_vmap+0xa9/0x1b0 [ 157.118763] drm_gem_vmap_unlocked+0x46/0xa0 [ 157.123086] drm_gem_fb_vmap+0xab/0x300 [ 157.126979] drm_atomic_helper_prepare_planes.part.0+0x487/0xb10 [ 157.133032] ? lockdep_init_map_type+0x19d/0x880 [ 157.137701] drm_atomic_helper_commit+0x13d/0x2e0 [ 157.142671] ? drm_atomic_nonblocking_commit+0xa0/0x180 [ 157.147988] drm_mode_atomic_ioctl+0x766/0xe40 […] [ 157.346424] —[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]—

Acquiring GEM handles for the framebuffers GEM buffer objects prevents this from happening. The framebuffers cleanup later puts the handle references.

Commit 1a148af06000 (drm/gem-shmem: Use dma_buf from GEM object instance) triggers the segmentation fault easily by using the dma-buf field more widely. The underlying issue with reference counting has been present before.

v2:

• acquire the handle instead of the BO (Christian)
• fix comment style (Christian)
• drop the Fixes tag (Christian)
• rename err_ gotos
• add missing Link tag

Affected Software

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/08480e285c6a82ce689008d643e4a51db0aaef8b
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3cf520d9860d4ec9f7f32068825da31f18dd3f25
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5307dce878d4126e1b375587318955bd019c3741
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cb4c956a15f8b7f870649454771fc3761f504b5f