🛡️ CVE-2025-38616 — kernel

🟠 CVSS 7.8 — High ✅ No Known Exploit NVD
7.8
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

tls: handle data disappearing from under the TLS ULP

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

tls: handle data disappearing from under the TLS ULP

TLS expects that it owns the receive queue of the TCP socket.

This cannot be guaranteed in case the reader of the TCP socket

entered before the TLS ULP was installed, or uses some non-standard

read API (eg. zerocopy ones). Replace the WARN_ON() and a buggy

early exit (which leaves anchor pointing to a freed skb) with real

error handling. Wipe the parsing state and tell the reader to retry.

We already reload the anchor every time we (re)acquire the socket lock,

so the only condition we need to avoid is an out of bounds read

(not having enough bytes in the socket for previously parsed record len).

If some data was read from under TLS but there's enough in the queue

we'll reload and decrypt what is most likely not a valid TLS record.

Leading to some undefined behavior from TLS perspective (corrupting

a stream? missing an alert? missing an attack?) but no kernel crash

should take place.

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 high, integrity high, availability high.

Affected software

CVE-2025-38616 is recorded against 3 packages.

  • :linux-kernel: (from :0 up to :2026-03-05)
  • kernel (from 6.16.0 up to 6.16.2)
  • linux-kernel

Timeline and source

Published on 1 March 2026 and last revised on 11 August 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. A vendor advisory or fix has been published. Record sourced from NVD.

References

source.android.com (Advisory)
android.googlesource.com (Fix)
android.googlesource.com (Fix)

CVE-2025-38616 on other distributions

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

Details

Severity High
CVSS Score 7.8
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source NVD
Published 2026-03-01
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-08-11

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
:linux-kernel: :0 :2026-03-05
kernel 6.16.0 6.16.2
linux-kernel

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