Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2025-21646

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: afs: Fix the maximum cell name length The kafs filesystem limits the maximum length of a cell to 256 bytes, but a problem occurs if someone actually does that: kafs tries to create a directory under /proc/net/afs/ with the name of the cell, but that fails with a warning: WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 9 at fs/proc/generic.c:405 because procfs limits the maximum filename length to 255. However, the DNS limits the maximum lookup length and, by extension, the maximum cell name, to 255 less two (length count and trailing NUL). Fix this by limiting the maximum acceptable cellname length to 253. This also allows us to be sure we can create the "/afs/.<cell>/" mountpoint too. Further, split the YFS VL record cell name maximum to be the 256 allowed by the protocol and ignore the record retrieved by YFSVL.GetCellName if it exceeds 253.

EPSS: 0.002 (10.1th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

Affected products

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-21646?
CVE-2025-21646 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2025-01-19.
How severe is CVE-2025-21646?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.
Is CVE-2025-21646 known to be exploited?
3 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.