Linux Kernel Vulnerability Affecting Lock Pointers

CVE-2025-68250

What is CVE-2025-68250?

A vulnerability in the Linux kernel related to the handling of lock pointers has been identified. The issue arises from the assumption that lock pointers must be at least 4-byte aligned, which is not the case for certain architectures such as m68k that only guarantee 2-byte alignment for 32-bit values. This misalignment results in the triggering of WARN_ON_ONCE checks. To address this problem, the kernel has been modified to adjust runtime checks to silently ignore lock pointers that fail the alignment requirement, effectively disabling the feature while preventing unnecessary warnings.

References