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In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been...

Moderate severity Unreviewed Published Sep 11, 2025 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Nov 25, 2025

Package

No package listedSuggest a package

Affected versions

Unknown

Patched versions

Unknown

Description

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

dm: dm-crypt: Do not partially accept write BIOs with zoned targets

Read and write operations issued to a dm-crypt target may be split
according to the dm-crypt internal limits defined by the max_read_size
and max_write_size module parameters (default is 128 KB). The intent is
to improve processing time of large BIOs by splitting them into smaller
operations that can be parallelized on different CPUs.

For zoned dm-crypt targets, this BIO splitting is still done but without
the parallel execution to ensure that the issuing order of write
operations to the underlying devices remains sequential. However, the
splitting itself causes other problems:

  1. Since dm-crypt relies on the block layer zone write plugging to
    handle zone append emulation using regular write operations, the
    reminder of a split write BIO will always be plugged into the target
    zone write plugged. Once the on-going write BIO finishes, this
    reminder BIO is unplugged and issued from the zone write plug work.
    If this reminder BIO itself needs to be split, the reminder will be
    re-issued and plugged again, but that causes a call to a
    blk_queue_enter(), which may block if a queue freeze operation was
    initiated. This results in a deadlock as DM submission still holds
    BIOs that the queue freeze side is waiting for.

  2. dm-crypt relies on the emulation done by the block layer using
    regular write operations for processing zone append operations. This
    still requires to properly return the written sector as the BIO
    sector of the original BIO. However, this can be done correctly only
    and only if there is a single clone BIO used for processing the
    original zone append operation issued by the user. If the size of a
    zone append operation is larger than dm-crypt max_write_size, then
    the orginal BIO will be split and processed as a chain of regular
    write operations. Such chaining result in an incorrect written sector
    being returned to the zone append issuer using the original BIO
    sector. This in turn results in file system data corruptions using
    xfs or btrfs.

Fix this by modifying get_max_request_size() to always return the size
of the BIO to avoid it being split with dm_accpet_partial_bio() in
crypt_map(). get_max_request_size() is renamed to
get_max_request_sectors() to clarify the unit of the value returned
and its interface is changed to take a struct dm_target pointer and a
pointer to the struct bio being processed. In addition to this change,
to ensure that crypt_alloc_buffer() works correctly, set the dm-crypt
device max_hw_sectors limit to be at most
BIO_MAX_VECS << PAGE_SECTORS_SHIFT (1 MB with a 4KB page architecture).
This forces DM core to split write BIOs before passing them to
crypt_map(), and thus guaranteeing that dm-crypt can always accept an
entire write BIO without needing to split it.

This change does not have any effect on the read path of dm-crypt. Read
operations can still be split and the BIO fragments processed in
parallel. There is also no impact on the performance of the write path
given that all zone write BIOs were already processed inline instead of
in parallel.

This change also does not affect in any way regular dm-crypt block
devices.

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Sep 11, 2025
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Sep 11, 2025
Last updated Nov 25, 2025

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

This score estimates the probability of this vulnerability being exploited within the next 30 days. Data provided by FIRST.
(2nd percentile)

Weaknesses

Improper Locking

The product does not properly acquire or release a lock on a resource, leading to unexpected resource state changes and behaviors. Learn more on MITRE.

CVE ID

CVE-2025-39791

GHSA ID

GHSA-96wf-6gfh-q6gv

Source code

No known source code

Dependabot alerts are not supported on this advisory because it does not have a package from a supported ecosystem with an affected and fixed version.

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