CVE-2025-38449

drm/gem: Acquire references on GEM handles for framebuffers

State
Published
Severity
7.8 High
Published
Jul 25, 2025
Updated
Oct 15, 2026
Reserved
Apr 16, 2025

Read the record on cve.org

Description

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

drm/gem: Acquire references on GEM handles for framebuffers

A GEM handle can be released while the GEM buffer object is attached to a DRM framebuffer. This leads to the release of the dma-buf backing the buffer object, if any. [1] Trying to use the framebuffer in further mode-setting operations leads to a segmentation fault. Most easily happens with driver that use shadow planes for vmap-ing the dma-buf during a page flip. An example is shown below.

[ 156.791968] ------------[ cut here ]------------ [ 156.796830] WARNING: CPU: 2 PID: 2255 at drivers/dma-buf/dma-buf.c:1527 dma_buf_vmap+0x224/0x430 [...] [ 156.942028] RIP: 0010:dma_buf_vmap+0x224/0x430 [ 157.043420] Call Trace: [ 157.045898] <TASK> [ 157.048030] ? show_trace_log_lvl+0x1af/0x2c0 [ 157.052436] ? show_trace_log_lvl+0x1af/0x2c0 [ 157.056836] ? show_trace_log_lvl+0x1af/0x2c0 [ 157.061253] ? drm_gem_shmem_vmap+0x74/0x710 [ 157.065567] ? dma_buf_vmap+0x224/0x430 [ 157.069446] ? __warn.cold+0x58/0xe4 [ 157.073061] ? dma_buf_vmap+0x224/0x430 [ 157.077111] ? report_bug+0x1dd/0x390 [ 157.080842] ? handle_bug+0x5e/0xa0 [ 157.084389] ? exc_invalid_op+0x14/0x50 [ 157.088291] ? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x16/0x20 [ 157.092548] ? dma_buf_vmap+0x224/0x430 [ 157.096663] ? dma_resv_get_singleton+0x6d/0x230 [ 157.101341] ? __pfx_dma_buf_vmap+0x10/0x10 [ 157.105588] ? __pfx_dma_resv_get_singleton+0x10/0x10 [ 157.110697] drm_gem_shmem_vmap+0x74/0x710 [ 157.114866] drm_gem_vmap+0xa9/0x1b0 [ 157.118763] drm_gem_vmap_unlocked+0x46/0xa0 [ 157.123086] drm_gem_fb_vmap+0xab/0x300 [ 157.126979] drm_atomic_helper_prepare_planes.part.0+0x487/0xb10 [ 157.133032] ? lockdep_init_map_type+0x19d/0x880 [ 157.137701] drm_atomic_helper_commit+0x13d/0x2e0 [ 157.142671] ? drm_atomic_nonblocking_commit+0xa0/0x180 [ 157.147988] drm_mode_atomic_ioctl+0x766/0xe40 [...] [ 157.346424] ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]---

Acquiring GEM handles for the framebuffer's GEM buffer objects prevents this from happening. The framebuffer's cleanup later puts the handle references.

Commit 1a148af06000 ("drm/gem-shmem: Use dma_buf from GEM object instance") triggers the segmentation fault easily by using the dma-buf field more widely. The underlying issue with reference counting has been present before.

v2: - acquire the handle instead of the BO (Christian) - fix comment style (Christian) - drop the Fixes tag (Christian) - rename err_ gotos - add missing Link tag

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.17.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HLinux

Weaknesses

The record names no weakness.

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • 319c933c71f3dbdb2b3274d1634d3494c70efa06 to before cb4c956a15f8b7f870649454771fc3761f504b5fAffected
  • 319c933c71f3dbdb2b3274d1634d3494c70efa06 to before 08480e285c6a82ce689008d643e4a51db0aaef8bAffected
  • 319c933c71f3dbdb2b3274d1634d3494c70efa06 to before 3cf520d9860d4ec9f7f32068825da31f18dd3f25Affected
  • 319c933c71f3dbdb2b3274d1634d3494c70efa06 to before 5307dce878d4126e1b375587318955bd019c3741Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 3.12Affected
  • before 3.12Not affected
  • 6.6.99 through 6.6.*Not affected
  • 6.12.39 through 6.12.*Not affected
  • 6.15.7 through 6.15.*Not affected
  • 6.16 and laterNot affected

References

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