Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2025-21876

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: iommu/vt-d: Fix suspicious RCU usage Commit <d74169ceb0d2> ("iommu/vt-d: Allocate DMAR fault interrupts locally") moved the call to enable_drhd_fault_handling() to a code path that does not hold any lock while traversing the drhd list. Fix it by ensuring the dmar_global_lock lock is held when traversing the drhd list. Without this fix, the following warning is triggered: ============================= WARNING: suspicious RCU usage 6.14.0-rc3 #55 Not tainted ----------------------------- drivers/iommu/intel/dmar.c:2046 RCU-list traversed in non-reader section!! other info that might help us debug this: rcu_scheduler_active = 1, debug_locks = 1 2 locks held by cpuhp/1/23: #0: ffffffff84a67c50 (cpu_hotplug_lock){++++}-{0:0}, at: cpuhp_thread_fun+0x87/0x2c0 #1: ffffffff84a6a380 (cpuhp_state-up){+.+.}-{0:0}, at: cpuhp_thread_fun+0x87/0x2c0 stack backtrace: CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 23 Comm: cpuhp/1 Not tainted 6.14.0-rc3 #55 Call Trace: <TASK> dump_stack_lvl+0xb7/0xd0 lockdep_rcu_suspicious+0x159/0x1f0 ? __pfx_enable_drhd_fault_handling+0x10/0x10 enable_drhd_fault_handling+0x151/0x180 cpuhp_invoke_callback+0x1df/0x990 cpuhp_thread_fun+0x1ea/0x2c0 smpboot_thread_fn+0x1f5/0x2e0 ? __pfx_smpboot_thread_fn+0x10/0x10 kthread+0x12a/0x2d0 ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 ret_from_fork+0x4a/0x60 ? __pfx_kthread+0x10/0x10 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 </TASK> Holding the lock in enable_drhd_fault_handling() triggers a lockdep splat about a possible deadlock between dmar_global_lock and cpu_hotplug_lock. This is avoided by not holding dmar_global_lock when calling iommu_device_register(), which initiates the device probe process.

EPSS: 0.002 (10.4th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 8.8 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-21876?
CVE-2025-21876 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 8.8/10. Published 2025-03-27.
How severe is CVE-2025-21876?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 8.8 out of 10.