CVE-2025-38250: kernel: Bluetooth: hci_core: Fix use-after-free in vhci_flush()
Component: kernel
Severity: Moderate
CWE: CWE-362 (Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization ('Race Condition'))
CVSS v3: 7.3 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:H)
Public date: 2025-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

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

Bluetooth: hci_core: Fix use-after-free in vhci_flush()

syzbot reported use-after-free in vhci_flush() without repro. [0]

From the splat, a thread close()d a vhci file descriptor while
its device was being used by iotcl() on another thread.

Once the last fd refcnt is released, vhci_release() calls
hci_unregister_dev(), hci_free_dev(), and kfree() for struct
vhci_data, which is set to hci_dev->dev->driver_data.

The problem is that there is no synchronisation after unlinking
hdev from hci_dev_list in hci_unregister_dev().  There might be
another thread still accessing the hdev which was fetched before
the unlink operation.

We can use SRCU for such synchronisation.

Let's run hci_dev_reset() under SRCU and wait for its completion
in hci_unregister_dev().

Another option would be to restore hci_dev->destruct(), which was
removed in commit 587ae086f6e4 ("Bluetooth: Remove unused
hci-destruct cb").  However, this would not be a good solution, as
we should not run hci_unregister_dev() while there are in-flight
ioctl() requests, which could lead to another data-race KCSAN splat.

Note that other drivers seem to have the same problem, for exmaple,
virtbt_remove().

[0]:
BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in skb_queue_empty_lockless include/linux/skbuff.h:1891 [inline]
BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in skb_queue_purge_reason+0x99/0x360 net/core/skbuff.c:3937
Read of size 8 at addr ffff88807cb8d858 by task syz.1.219/6718

CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 6718 Comm: syz.1.219 Not tainted 6.16.0-rc1-syzkaller-00196-g08207f42d3ff #0 PREEMPT(full)
Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 05/07/2025
Call Trace:
 <TASK>
 dump_stack_lvl+0x189/0x250 lib/dump_stack.c:120
 print_address_description mm/kasan/report.c:408 [inline]
 print_report+0xd2/0x2b0 mm/kasan/report.c:521
 kasan_report+0x118/0x150 mm/kasan/report.c:634
 skb_queue_empty_lockless include/linux/skbuff.h:1891 [inline]
 skb_queue_purge_reason+0x99/0x360 net/core/skbuff.c:3937
 skb_queue_purge include/linux/skbuff.h:3368 [inline]
 vhci_flush+0x44/0x50 drivers/bluetooth/hci_vhci.c:69
 hci_dev_do_reset net/bluetooth/hci_core.c:552 [inline]
 hci_dev_reset+0x420/0x5c0 net/bluetooth/hci_core.c:592
 sock_do_ioctl+0xd9/0x300 net/socket.c:1190
 sock_ioctl+0x576/0x790 net/socket.c:1311
 vfs_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:51 [inline]
 __do_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:907 [inline]
 __se_sys_ioctl+0xf9/0x170 fs/ioctl.c:893
 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:63 [inline]
 do_syscall_64+0xfa/0x3b0 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:94
 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f
RIP: 0033:0x7fcf5b98e929
Code: ff ff c3 66 2e 0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 00 0f 1f 40 00 48 89 f8 48 89 f7 48 89 d6 48 89 ca 4d 89 c2 4d 89 c8 4c 8b 4c 24 08 0f 05 <48> 3d 01 f0 ff ff 73 01 c3 48 c7 c1 a8 ff ff ff f7 d8 64 89 01 48
RSP: 002b:00007fcf5c7b9038 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 0000000000000010
RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 00007fcf5bbb6160 RCX: 00007fcf5b98e929
RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 00000000400448cb RDI: 0000000000000009
RBP: 00007fcf5ba10b39 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000
R10: 0000000000000000 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000000000
R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 00007fcf5bbb6160 R15: 00007ffd6353d528
 </TASK>

Allocated by task 6535:
 kasan_save_stack mm/kasan/common.c:47 [inline]
 kasan_save_track+0x3e/0x80 mm/kasan/common.c:68
 poison_kmalloc_redzone mm/kasan/common.c:377 [inline]
 __kasan_kmalloc+0x93/0xb0 mm/kasan/common.c:394
 kasan_kmalloc include/linux/kasan.h:260 [inline]
 __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x230/0x3d0 mm/slub.c:4359
 kmalloc_noprof include/linux/slab.h:905 [inline]
 kzalloc_noprof include/linux/slab.h:1039 [inline]
 vhci_open+0x57/0x360 drivers/bluetooth/hci_vhci.c:635
 misc_open+0x2bc/0x330 drivers/char/misc.c:161
 chrdev_open+0x4c9/0x5e0 fs/char_dev.c:414
 do_dentry_open+0xdf0/0x1970 fs/open.c:964
 vfs_open+0x3b/0x340 fs/open.c:1094
 do_open fs/namei.c:3887 [inline]
 path_openat+0x2ee5/0x3830 fs/name
---truncated---

Statement: The vulnerability is caused by a race condition between ioctl() and close() on a virtual HCI (vhci) device, where vhci_release() may free memory still accessed by vhci_flush() via hci_dev_reset(). This leads to a potential use-after-free and kernel crash, as reported by syzbot. The CVSS vector includes PR:L because the attack requires access to an open file descriptor (typically from /dev/vhci) but not elevated privileges. For the CVSS, the AV:L is selected since the attack is initiated locally. The impact on Availability is High and potentially Confidentiality and Integrity could be High too.

Affected upstream versions: 3.4
Fixed upstream versions: 0, 5.10.259, 5.15.209, 6.1.167, 6.12.36, 6.15.5, 6.16, 6.6.97
Upstream repository: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
Upstream fix commit: dd4becd3fd4102696e1c15e6d260a1712a2d8685