CVE-2025-38499 – Linux Kernel Clone Private Mnt userns Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

CVE ID : CVE-2025-38499

Published : Aug. 11, 2025, 4:15 p.m. | 1 hour, 29 minutes ago

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

clone_private_mnt(): make sure that caller has CAP_SYS_ADMIN in the right userns

What we want is to verify there is that clone won’t expose something
hidden by a mount we wouldn’t be able to undo. “Wouldn’t be able to undo”
may be a result of MNT_LOCKED on a child, but it may also come from
lacking admin rights in the userns of the namespace mount belongs to.

clone_private_mnt() checks the former, but not the latter.

There’s a number of rather confusing CAP_SYS_ADMIN checks in various
userns during the mount, especially with the new mount API; they serve
different purposes and in case of clone_private_mnt() they usually,
but not always end up covering the missing check mentioned above.

Severity: 0.0 | NA

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