SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityAnalyzed

CVE-2025-38709

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: loop: Avoid updating block size under exclusive owner Syzbot came up with a reproducer where a loop device block size is changed underneath a mounted filesystem.

MEDIUM 5.5EPSS 0.15%

Does this matter?

Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.15%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: loop: Avoid updating block size under exclusive owner Syzbot came up with a reproducer where a loop device block size is changed underneath a mounted filesystem. This causes a mismatch between the block device block size and the block size stored in the superblock causing confusion in various places such as fs/buffer.c. The particular issue triggered by syzbot was a warning in __getblk_slow() due to requested buffer size not matching block device block size. Fix the problem by getting exclusive hold of the loop device to change its block size. This fails if somebody (such as filesystem) has already an exclusive ownership of the block device and thus prevents modifying the loop device under some exclusive owner which doesn't expect it.

CVSS 3.1
5.5 MEDIUMCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS
0.15% probability · 4th percentile
CISA KEV
Not listed
Affected
linux/linux kernel
Source
416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.