CVE-2025-38434
Medium
Elevated severity or exploit probability.
CVSS breakdown
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
| Attack Vector | L | Local |
| Attack Complexity | L | Low |
| Privileges Required | L | Low |
| User Interaction | N | None |
| Scope | U | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | H | High |
| Integrity | H | High |
| Availability | H | High |
Timeline
- 2025-07-25 — Published (NVD)
- 2026-07-30 — Last modified (NVD)
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: Revert "riscv: Define TASK_SIZE_MAX for __access_ok()" This reverts commit ad5643cf2f69 ("riscv: Define TASK_SIZE_MAX for __access_ok()"). This commit changes TASK_SIZE_MAX to be LONG_MAX to optimize access_ok(), because the previous TASK_SIZE_MAX (default to TASK_SIZE) requires some computation. The reasoning was that all user addresses are less than LONG_MAX, and all kernel addresses are greater than LONG_MAX. Therefore access_ok() can filter kernel addresses. Addresses between TASK_SIZE and LONG_MAX are not valid user addresses, but access_ok() let them pass. That was thought to be okay, because they are not valid addresses at hardware level. Unfortunately, one case is missed: get_user_pages_fast() happily accepts addresses between TASK_SIZE and LONG_MAX. futex(), for instance, uses get_user_pages_fast(). This causes the problem reported by Robert [1]. Therefore, revert this commit. TASK_SIZE_MAX is changed to the default: TASK_SIZE. This unfortunately reduces performance, because TASK_SIZE is more expensive to compute compared to LONG_MAX. But correctness first, we can think about optimization later, if required.