CVE-2025-38066

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: dm cache: prevent BUG_ON by blocking retries on failed device resumes A cache device failing to resume due to mapping errors should not be retried, as the failure leaves a partially initialized policy object. Repeating the resume operation risks triggering BUG_ON when reloading cache mappings into the incomplete policy object. Reproduce steps: 1. create a cache metadata consisting of 512 or more cache blocks, with some mappings stored in the first array block of the mapping array. Here we use cache_restore v1.0 to build the metadata. cat <<EOF >> cmeta.xml <superblock uuid="" block_size="128" nr_cache_blocks="512" \ policy="smq" hint_width="4"> <mappings> <mapping cache_block="0" origin_block="0" dirty="false"/> </mappings> </superblock> EOF dmsetup create cmeta --table "0 8192 linear /dev/sdc 0" cache_restore -i cmeta.xml -o /dev/mapper/cmeta --metadata-version=2 dmsetup remove cmeta 2. wipe the second array block of the mapping array to simulate data degradations. mapping_root=$(dd if=/dev/sdc bs=1c count=8 skip=192 \ 2>/dev/null | hexdump -e '1/8 "%u\n"') ablock=$(dd if=/dev/sdc bs=1c count=8 skip=$((4096*mapping_root+2056)) \ 2>/dev/null | hexdump -e '1/8 "%u\n"') dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc bs=4k count=1 seek=$ablock 3. try bringing up the cache device. The resume is expected to fail due to the broken array block. dmsetup create cmeta --table "0 8192 linear /dev/sdc 0" dmsetup create cdata --table "0 65536 linear /dev/sdc 8192" dmsetup create corig --table "0 524288 linear /dev/sdc 262144" dmsetup create cache --notable dmsetup load cache --table "0 524288 cache /dev/mapper/cmeta \ /dev/mapper/cdata /dev/mapper/corig 128 2 metadata2 writethrough smq 0" dmsetup resume cache 4. try resuming the cache again. An unexpected BUG_ON is triggered while loading cache mappings. dmsetup resume cache Kernel logs: (snip) ------------[ cut here ]------------ kernel BUG at drivers/md/dm-cache-policy-smq.c:752! Oops: invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN NOPTI CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 332 Comm: dmsetup Not tainted 6.13.4 #3 RIP: 0010:smq_load_mapping+0x3e5/0x570 Fix by disallowing resume operations for devices that failed the initial attempt.

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References

• MITRE
• NVD
• Launchpad
• Debian

Other references

• https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-38066
• https://git.kernel.org/linus/5da692e2262b8f81993baa9592f57d12c2703dea (6.15-rc1)
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/00586b78eeb7c626a14ca13453a1631f88a7cf36
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/025c8f477625eb39006ded650e7d027bcfb20e79
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3986ef4a9b6a0d9c28bc325d8713beba5e67586f
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5da692e2262b8f81993baa9592f57d12c2703dea
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c5356a5e80442131e2714d0d26bb110590e4e568
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c614584c2a66b538f469089ac089457a34590c14
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cc80a5cc520939d0a7d071cc4ae4b3c55ef171d0
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f3128e3074e8af565cc6a66fe3384a56df87f803