🛡️ CVE-2025-68259 on Debian — linux

⚪ Unknown ✅ No Known Exploit OSV
N/A
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: KVM: SVM: Don't skip unrelated instruction if INT3/INTO is replaced When re-injecting a soft interrupt from an INT3, INT0, or (select) INTn instruction, discard the exception and retry the instruction if the code stream is changed (e.g. by a different vCPU) between when the CPU executes the instruction and when KVM decodes the instruction to get the next RIP. As effectively predicted by commit 6ef88d6e36c2 ("KVM: SVM: Re-inject INT3/INTO instead of retrying the instruction"), failure to verify that the correct INTn instruction was decoded can effectively clobber guest state due to decoding the wrong instruction and thus specifying the wrong next RIP. The bug most often manifests as "Oops: int3" panics on static branch checks in Linux guests. Enabling or disabling a static branch in Linux uses the kernel's "text poke" code patching mechanism. To modify code while other CPUs may be executing that code, Linux (temporarily) replaces the first byte of the original instruction with an int3 (opcode 0xcc), then patches in the new code stream except for the first byte, and finally replaces the int3 with the first byte of the new code stream. If a CPU hits the int3, i.e. executes the code while it's being modified, then the guest kernel must look up the RIP to determine how to handle the #BP, e.g. by emulating the new instruction. If the RIP is incorrect, then this lookup fails and the guest kernel panics. The bug reproduces almost instantly by hacking the guest kernel to repeatedly check a static branch[1] while running a drgn script[2] on the host to constantly swap out the memory containing the guest's TSS. [1]: https://gist.github.com/osandov/44d17c51c28c0ac998ea0334edf90b5a [2]: https://gist.github.com/osandov/10e45e45afa29b11e0c7209247afc00b

Distribution advisory

This page covers CVE-2025-68259 as tracked by Debian, for the package linux. The fix is available in version 6.17.12-1; earlier versions remain affected.

Affected software

DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68259 is recorded against 2 packages.

  • linux (fixed in 6.17.12-1)
  • linux-6.1 (fixed in 6.1.162-1~deb11u1)

Timeline and source

Published on 16 December 2025 and last revised on 4 August 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from OSV.

References

security-tracker.debian.org (Advisory)

CVE-2025-68259 on other distributions

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Details

Severity Unknown
CVSS Score N/A
CVSS Vector N/A
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source OSV
Published 2025-12-16
Updated 2026-08-20
Modified 2026-08-04
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
linux 6.17.12-1
linux-6.1 6.1.162-1~deb11u1

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