CVE & CISA-KEV Catalog

CVE-2025-21737

MEDIUM
5.5
CVSS v3
NVD

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ceph: fix memory leak in ceph_mds_auth_match() We now free the temporary target path substring allocation on every possible branch, instead of omitting the default branch. In some cases, a memory leak occured, which could rapidly crash the system (depending on how many file accesses were attempted). This was detected in production because it caused a continuous memory growth, eventually triggering kernel OOM and completely hard-locking the kernel. Relevant kmemleak stacktrace: unreferenced object 0xffff888131e69900 (size 128): comm "git", pid 66104, jiffies 4295435999 hex dump (first 32 bytes): 76 6f 6c 75 6d 65 73 2f 63 6f 6e 74 61 69 6e 65 volumes/containe 72 73 2f 67 69 74 65 61 2f 67 69 74 65 61 2f 67 rs/gitea/gitea/g backtrace (crc 2f3bb450): [<ffffffffaa68fb49>] __kmalloc_noprof+0x359/0x510 [<ffffffffc32bf1df>] ceph_mds_check_access+0x5bf/0x14e0 [ceph] [<ffffffffc3235722>] ceph_open+0x312/0xd80 [ceph] [<ffffffffaa7dd786>] do_dentry_open+0x456/0x1120 [<ffffffffaa7e3729>] vfs_open+0x79/0x360 [<ffffffffaa832875>] path_openat+0x1de5/0x4390 [<ffffffffaa834fcc>] do_filp_open+0x19c/0x3c0 [<ffffffffaa7e44a1>] do_sys_openat2+0x141/0x180 [<ffffffffaa7e4945>] __x64_sys_open+0xe5/0x1a0 [<ffffffffac2cc2f7>] do_syscall_64+0xb7/0x210 [<ffffffffac400130>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f It can be triggered by mouting a subdirectory of a CephFS filesystem, and then trying to access files on this subdirectory with an auth token using a path-scoped capability: $ ceph auth get client.services [client.services] key = REDACTED caps mds = "allow rw fsname=cephfs path=/volumes/" caps mon = "allow r fsname=cephfs" caps osd = "allow rw tag cephfs data=cephfs" $ cat /proc/self/mounts services@[REDACTED].cephfs=/volumes/containers /ceph/containers ceph rw,noatime,name=services,secret=<hidden>,ms_mode=prefer-crc,mount_timeout=300,acl,mon_addr=[REDACTED]:3300,recover_session=clean 0 0 $ seq 1 1000000 | xargs -P32 --replace={} touch /ceph/containers/file-{} && \ seq 1 1000000 | xargs -P32 --replace={} cat /ceph/containers/file-{} [ idryomov: combine if statements, rename rc to path_matched and make it a bool, formatting ]

How to fix

Remediation Available
linuxDebian
Fixed in:6.12.15-1CVE-2025-21737
Fixed in:6.12.15-1CVE-2025-21737
linux-azure-6.11Ubuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1015.15~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-gcp-6.11Ubuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1015.15~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-hwe-6.11Ubuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-26.26~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-6.11.0-1014-lowlatencyUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1014.15~24.04.1USN-7521-3
linux-image-6.11.0-1014-lowlatency-64kUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1014.15~24.04.1USN-7521-3
linux-image-6.11.0-1015-azureUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1015.15~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-6.11.0-1015-azure-fdeUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1015.15~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-6.11.0-1015-gcpUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1015.15~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-6.11.0-1015-gcp-64kUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1015.15~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-6.11.0-1022-oemUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1022.22USN-7521-1
linux-image-6.11.0-26-genericUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-26.26~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-6.11.0-26-generic-64kUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-26.26~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-azureUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1015.15~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-azure-fdeUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1015.15~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-gcpUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1015.15~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-gcp-64kUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1015.15~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-generic-64k-hwe-24.04Ubuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-26.26~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-generic-hwe-24.04Ubuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-26.26~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-image-lowlatency-64k-hwe-24.04Ubuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1014.15~24.04.1USN-7521-3
linux-image-lowlatency-hwe-24.04Ubuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1014.15~24.04.1USN-7521-3
linux-image-oem-24.04bUbuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1022.22USN-7521-1
linux-image-virtual-hwe-24.04Ubuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-26.26~24.04.1USN-7521-1
linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.11Ubuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1014.15~24.04.1USN-7521-3
linux-oem-6.11Ubuntu
Fixed in:6.11.0-1022.22USN-7521-1

Remediation is compiled from vendor and distribution security advisories. Always confirm against the linked source for your exact version and platform.

CVSS v3 Vector

Exploitability

Attack VectorLocal
Attack ComplexityLow
Privileges RequiredLow
User InteractionNone
ScopeUnchanged

Impact

ConfidentialityNone
IntegrityNone
AvailabilityHigh

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Exploit Intelligence

0.19%probability of exploitation in 30 days
9thpercentile

Low risk: more likely to be exploited than 9% of all known CVEs.

References

Related Vulnerabilities

Other CWE-401 (Missing Release of Memory (Memory Leak)) vulnerabilities, ordered by exploit likelihood. View all

CVESeverityCVSSEPSSExploitedFix
CVE-2020-13934High7.564%-Fix
CVE-2016-6304High7.563%-Fix
CVE-2019-12265Medium5.355%-Fix
CVE-2001-0136Medium5.045%--
CVE-2016-4232High7.536%--
CVE-2001-0543Medium5.021%--
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This product uses NVD data but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. EPSS scores courtesy of FIRST.org (https://www.first.org/epss). Source: CISA KEV Catalog. Data as of 2025-10-01.