Reference page — cumulative record through Wednesday, August 19, 2026 UTC. Reference pages update as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record.
Linux Linux — netfs: Fix unbuffered write error handling
AV AC PR UI S C I A CVSS EPSS %ile KEV
L L L N U H H H 7.8 .0023 13.8 —
AFFECTED
Product Versions Fixed
Linux 288ace2f57c9d06dd2e42bd80d03747d879a4068 – —
Linux 6.10 – 6.12.44
TIMELINE
Apr 16 Reserved by Linux
Sep 5 Published (CNA: Linux)
Jul 30 RESCORED — CVE-2025-39723 (Linux). CVSS 7.1 → 7.8 (NVD).
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
netfs: Fix unbuffered write error handling
If all the subrequests in an unbuffered write stream fail, the subrequest
collector doesn't update the stream->transferred value and it retains its
initial LONG_MAX value. Unfortunately, if all active streams fail, then we
take the smallest value of { LONG_MAX, LONG_MAX, ... } as the value to set
in wreq->transferred - which is then returned from ->write_iter().
LONG_MAX was chosen as the initial value so that all the streams can be
quickly assessed by taking the smallest value of all stream->transferred -
but this only works if we've set any of them.
Fix this by adding a flag to indicate whether the value in
stream->transferred is valid and checking that when we integrate the
values. stream->transferred can then be initialised to zero.
This was found by running the generic/750 xfstest against cifs with
cache=none. It splices data to the target file. Once (if) it has used up
all the available scratch space, the writes start failing with ENOSPC.
This causes ->write_iter() to fail. However, it was returning
wreq->transferred, i.e. LONG_MAX, rather than an error (because it thought
the amount transferred was non-zero) and iter_file_splice_write() would
then try to clean up that amount of pipe bufferage - leading to an oops
when it overran. The kernel log showed:
CIFS: VFS: Send error in write = -28
followed by:
BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000008
with:
RIP: 0010:iter_file_splice_write+0x3a4/0x520
do_splice+0x197/0x4e0
or:
RIP: 0010:pipe_buf_release (include/linux/pipe_fs_i.h:282)
iter_file_splice_write (fs/splice.c:755)
Also put a warning check into splice to announce if ->write_iter() returned
that it had written more than it was asked to.
Lifecycle
Complete event history — 3 events, chronological
| Date | Event | Detail |
| April 16, 2025 | Reserved | Reserved by Linux |
| September 5, 2025 | Published | Published (CNA: Linux) |
| July 30, 2026 | RESCORED | RESCORED — CVE-2025-39723 (Linux). CVSS 7.1 → 7.8 (NVD). |
Affected
Affected products and packages — 2 rows
| Vendor | Product / Package | Ecosystem | Version introduced | Fixed |
| Linux | Linux | — | 288ace2f57c9d06dd2e42bd80d03747d879a4068 | — |
| Linux | Linux | — | 6.10 | 6.12.44 |
About this page
This is a reference page, not a dated page of record. It assembles the complete lifecycle of CVE-2025-39723 from the CVE Program record, NVD enrichment, the CISA KEV catalog, EPSS, and OSV advisories. The box score's numbers (CVSS, EPSS, KEV status) are current as of Wednesday, August 19, 2026 UTC and are re-derived as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record. The authoritative source for this identifier is cve.org.