Vulnerability in Linux
CVE-2025-21672
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: afs: Fix merge preference rule failure condition syzbot reported a lock held when returning to userspace[1]. This is because if argc is less than 0 and the function returns directly, the held inode lock is not released. Fix this by store the error in ret and jump to done to clean up instead of returning directly. [dh: Modified Lizhi Xu's original patch to make it honour the error code from afs_split_string()] [1] WARNING: lock held when returning to user space! 6.13.0-rc3-syzkaller-00209-g499551201b5f #0 Not tainted ------------------------------------------------ syz-executor133/5823 is leaving the kernel with locks still held! 1 lock held by syz-executor133/5823: #0: ffff888071cffc00 (&sb->s_type->i_mutex_key#9){++++}-{4:4}, at: inode_lock include/linux/fs.h:818 [inline] #0: ffff888071cffc00 (&sb->s_type->i_mutex_key#9){++++}-{4:4}, at: afs_proc_addr_prefs_write+0x2bb/0x14e0 fs/afs/addr_prefs.c:388
EPSS: 0.001 (3.5th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.
Affected products
- Linux — versions f94f70d39cc2d54079ebae934862198516315db2, 6.8, 0
- Linux Linux_kernel — versions 6.13
Weakness classification (CWE)
Public proof-of-concept exploits
References
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2025-21672?
- CVE-2025-21672 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux, classified under Improper Locking. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2025-01-31.
- How severe is CVE-2025-21672?
- Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.
- Is CVE-2025-21672 known to be exploited?
- 1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.