CVE-2025-39737 describes a soft lockup vulnerability in the Linux kernel's kmemleak module, specifically within the __kmemleak_do_cleanup() function, affecting Debian and Linux kernel versions. This occurs on systems with kmemleak enabled, particularly debug kernels, when a large number of kmemleak objects are being processed for cleanup, leading to CPU starvation. Rated as Medium severity (CVSS 5.5), it has a local attack vector with low complexity, resulting in high availability impact (denial of service) but no confidentiality or integrity impact. There is currently no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB), or inclusion in the KEV catalog, though it has garnered some community discussion and media coverage.
| Vendor | Product | Version(s) | CPE |
|---|---|---|---|
>= 5.4.1, < 5.4.297CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | ||
>= 5.5, < 5.10.241CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | ||
>= 5.11, < 5.15.190CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | ||
>= 5.16, < 6.1.149CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* | ||
>= 6.2, < 6.6.103CPE matchmatch criteria | cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* |
CVSS version used by this source: 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.0 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.1 GitHub mentions.
The average CVE in this peer group has 0.1 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.
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