CVE-2025-21737
Description
From CVE.org
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 ]
Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details
Info alert:Important note
CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authority (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications).
The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.
CVSS v3 Score Breakdown
| Red Hat | NVD | cve.org | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base Score | 5.5 | 5.5 | 5.5 |
| Attack Vector | Local | Local | Local |
| Attack Complexity | Low | Low | Low |
| Privileges Required | Low | Low | Low |
| User Interaction | None | None | None |
| Scope | Unchanged | Unchanged | Unchanged |
| Confidentiality | None | None | None |
| Integrity Impact | None | None | None |
| Availability Impact | High | High | High |
Vector
Red Hat: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
cve.org: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Understanding the Weakness (CWE)
Availability
Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Instability; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory)
Most memory leaks result in general product reliability problems, but if an attacker can intentionally trigger a memory leak, the attacker might be able to launch a denial of service attack (by crashing or hanging the program) or take advantage of other unexpected program behavior resulting from a low memory condition.
Other
Technical Impact: Reduce Performance
Frequently Asked Questions
Not sure what something means? Check out our Security Glossary.
Want to get errata notifications? Sign up here.