CVE-2025-38528 — Use of Externally-Controlled Format String in Linux
Severity
5.5MEDIUMNVD
OSV3.2
EPSS
0.0%
top 95.98%
CISA KEV
Not in KEV
Exploit
No known exploits
Affected products
Timeline
PublishedAug 16
Latest updateMar 25
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
bpf: Reject %p% format string in bprintf-like helpers
static const char fmt[] = "%p%";
bpf_trace_printk(fmt, sizeof(fmt));
The above BPF program isn't rejected and causes a kernel warning at
runtime:
Please remove unsupported %\x00 in format string
WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 7244 at lib/vsprintf.c:2680 format_decode+0x49c/0x5d0
This happens because bpf_bprintf_prepare skips over the second %,
detected as punctuation, while proces…
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HExploitability: 1.8 | Impact: 3.6
Affected Packages4 packages
▶CVEListV5linux/linux48cac3f4a96ddf08df8e53809ed066de0dc93915 — 97303e541e12f1fea97834ec64b98991e8775f39+6
Also affects: Debian Linux 11.0