CVE-2025-21864

tcp: drop secpath at the same time as we currently drop dst

State
Published
Severity
7.8 High
Published
Mar 12, 2025
Updated
Oct 15, 2026
Reserved
Dec 29, 2024

Read the record on cve.org

Description

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

tcp: drop secpath at the same time as we currently drop dst

Xiumei reported hitting the WARN in xfrm6_tunnel_net_exit while running tests that boil down to: - create a pair of netns - run a basic TCP test over ipcomp6 - delete the pair of netns

The xfrm_state found on spi_byaddr was not deleted at the time we delete the netns, because we still have a reference on it. This lingering reference comes from a secpath (which holds a ref on the xfrm_state), which is still attached to an skb. This skb is not leaked, it ends up on sk_receive_queue and then gets defer-free'd by skb_attempt_defer_free.

The problem happens when we defer freeing an skb (push it on one CPU's defer_list), and don't flush that list before the netns is deleted. In that case, we still have a reference on the xfrm_state that we don't expect at this point.

We already drop the skb's dst in the TCP receive path when it's no longer needed, so let's also drop the secpath. At this point, tcp_filter has already called into the LSM hooks that may require the secpath, so it should not be needed anymore. However, in some of those places, the MPTCP extension has just been attached to the skb, so we cannot simply drop all extensions.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.17.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HLinux
3.15.5 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCISA-ADP

Weaknesses

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • 68822bdf76f10c3dc80609d4e2cdc1e847429086 to before 87858bbf21da239ace300d61dd209907995c0491Affected
  • 68822bdf76f10c3dc80609d4e2cdc1e847429086 to before f1d5e6a5e468308af7759cf5276779d3155c5e98Affected
  • 68822bdf76f10c3dc80609d4e2cdc1e847429086 to before cd34a07f744451e2ecf9005bb7d24d0b2fb83656Affected
  • 68822bdf76f10c3dc80609d4e2cdc1e847429086 to before 69cafd9413084cd5012cf5d7c7ec6f3d493726d9Affected
  • 68822bdf76f10c3dc80609d4e2cdc1e847429086 to before 9b6412e6979f6f9e0632075f8f008937b5cd4efdAffected
LinuxLinux
  • 5.19Affected
  • before 5.19Not affected
  • 6.1.130 through 6.1.*Not affected
  • 6.6.80 through 6.6.*Not affected
  • 6.12.17 through 6.12.*Not affected
  • 6.13.5 through 6.13.*Not affected
  • 6.14 and laterNot affected

References

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