🛡️ CVE-2025-38059 — kernel

🟡 CVSS 5.5 — Medium ✅ No Known Exploit NVD
5.5
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid csum tree

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

btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid csum tree

[BUG]

When trying read-only scrub on a btrfs with rescue=idatacsums mount

option, it will crash with the following call trace:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000208

#PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode

#PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page

CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 835 Comm: btrfs Tainted: G O 6.15.0-rc3-custom+ #236 PREEMPT(full)

Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS unknown 02/02/2022

RIP: 0010:btrfs_lookup_csums_bitmap+0x49/0x480 [btrfs]

Call Trace:

<TASK>

scrub_find_fill_first_stripe+0x35b/0x3d0 [btrfs]

scrub_simple_mirror+0x175/0x290 [btrfs]

scrub_stripe+0x5f7/0x6f0 [btrfs]

scrub_chunk+0x9a/0x150 [btrfs]

scrub_enumerate_chunks+0x333/0x660 [btrfs]

btrfs_scrub_dev+0x23e/0x600 [btrfs]

btrfs_ioctl+0x1dcf/0x2f80 [btrfs]

__x64_sys_ioctl+0x97/0xc0

do_syscall_64+0x4f/0x120

entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e

[CAUSE]

Mount option "rescue=idatacsums" will completely skip loading the csum

tree, so that any data read will not find any data csum thus we will

ignore data checksum verification.

Normally call sites utilizing csum tree will check the fs state flag

NO_DATA_CSUMS bit, but unfortunately scrub does not check that bit at all.

This results in scrub to call btrfs_search_slot() on a NULL pointer

and triggered above crash.

[FIX]

Check both extent and csum tree root before doing any tree search.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached with local access to the system, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs low-level privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality none, integrity none, availability high.

Affected software

CVE-2025-38059 is recorded against 2 packages.

  • kernel (from 6.13.0 up to 6.14.9)
  • linux-kernel

Timeline and source

Published on 18 June 2025 and last revised on 15 July 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. A vendor advisory or fix has been published. Record sourced from NVD.

References

git.kernel.org (Web)
git.kernel.org (Web)
git.kernel.org (Web)
git.kernel.org (Web)
github.com (Advisory)
nvd.nist.gov (Advisory)
git.kernel.org (Package)

CVE-2025-38059 on other distributions

Each distribution ships its own build and its own fixed version. Pick the one you run:

Details

Severity Medium
CVSS Score 5.5
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source NVD
Published 2025-06-18
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-07-15

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
kernel 6.13.0 6.14.9
linux-kernel — —

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