CVE-2025-38169high

CVE-2025-38169: high-severity vulnerability in Linux

arm64/fpsimd: Avoid clobbering kernel FPSIMD state with SMSTOP

Published · Updated

21Vexday Risk Score

No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.

ssvc Trackcvss 7.8epss 0.2%
exploitation probability
0.2%top 94% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: arm64/fpsimd: Avoid clobbering kernel FPSIMD state with SMSTOP On system with SME, a thread's kernel FPSIMD state may be erroneously clobbered during a context switch immediately after that state is restored. Systems without SME are unaffected. If the CPU happens to be in streaming SVE mode before a context switch to a thread with kernel FPSIMD state, fpsimd_thread_switch() will restore the kernel FPSIMD state using fpsimd_load_kernel_state() while the CPU is still in streaming SVE mode. When fpsimd_thread_switch() subsequently calls fpsimd_flush_cpu_state(), this will execute an SMSTOP, causing an exit from streaming SVE mode. The exit from streaming SVE mode will cause the hardware to reset a number of FPSIMD/SVE/SME registers, clobbering the FPSIMD state. Fix this by calling fpsimd_flush_cpu_state() before restoring the kernel FPSIMD state.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Affected products
Linux · Linux