Memory Management Vulnerability in Linux Kernel Affects x86 Architecture

CVE-2025-38071

What is CVE-2025-38071?

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel's memory management system can lead to potential crashes when the system fails to allocate memory. Specifically, in instances where the CONFIG_PHYSICAL_START is set to 0x100000, and less than 4 MiB of contiguous free memory is available, the function memblock_phys_alloc_range() can return a value of 0. This failure causes the kernel to mismanage the associated memory space, ultimately resulting in significant system instability. Ideally, the system should handle such failures gracefully and provide meaningful diagnostics to the user instead of compromising system integrity.

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