Rapid7

vulnerability

Amazon Linux AMI 2: CVE-2025-38614: Security patch for kernel (ALAS2KERNEL-5.15-2025-089)

Severity
5
CVSS
(AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:C)
Published
May 20, 2026
Added
May 20, 2026
Modified
May 20, 2026

Description

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

eventpoll: Fix semi-unbounded recursion

Ensure that epoll instances can never form a graph deeper than
EP_MAX_NESTS+1 links.

Currently, ep_loop_check_proc() ensures that the graph is loop-free and
does some recursion depth checks, but those recursion depth checks don't
limit the depth of the resulting tree for two reasons:

- They don't look upwards in the tree.
- If there are multiple downwards paths of different lengths, only one of
the paths is actually considered for the depth check since commit
28d82dc1c4ed ("epoll: limit paths").

Essentially, the current recursion depth check in ep_loop_check_proc() just
serves to prevent it from recursing too deeply while checking for loops.

A more thorough check is done in reverse_path_check() after the new graph
edge has already been created; this checks, among other things, that no
paths going upwards from any non-epoll file with a length of more than 5
edges exist. However, this check does not apply to non-epoll files.

As a result, it is possible to recurse to a depth of at least roughly 500,
tested on v6.15. (I am unsure if deeper recursion is possible; and this may
have changed with commit 8c44dac8add7 ("eventpoll: Fix priority inversion
problem").)

To fix it:

1. In ep_loop_check_proc(), note the subtree depth of each visited node,
and use subtree depths for the total depth calculation even when a subtree
has already been visited.
2. Add ep_get_upwards_depth_proc() for similarly determining the maximum
depth of an upwards walk.
3. In ep_loop_check(), use these values to limit the total path length
between epoll nodes to EP_MAX_NESTS edges.

Solutions

amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-bpftoolamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-bpftool-debuginfoamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernelamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-debuginfoamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-debuginfo-common-aarch64amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-debuginfo-common-x86_64amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-develamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-headersamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-livepatch-5-15-191-132-213amazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-toolsamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-tools-debuginfoamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-kernel-tools-develamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-perfamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-perf-debuginfoamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-python-perfamazon-linux-ami-2-upgrade-python-perf-debuginfo
Title
Rapid7 Labs

2026 Global Threat Landscape Report

The predictive window has collapsed. Exploitation follows disclosure in days. See how attackers are accelerating and how to stay ahead.