Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2025-40183

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: bpf: Fix metadata_dst leak __bpf_redirect_neigh_v{4,6} Cilium has a BPF egress gateway feature which forces outgoing K8s Pod traffic to pass through dedicated egress gateways which then SNAT the traffic in order to interact with stable IPs outside the cluster. The traffic is directed to the gateway via vxlan tunnel in collect md mode. A recent BPF change utilized the bpf_redirect_neigh() helper to forward packets after the arrival and decap on vxlan, which turned out over time that the kmalloc-256 slab usage in kernel was ever-increasing. The issue was that vxlan allocates the metadata_dst object and attaches it through a fake dst entry to the skb. The latter was never released though given bpf_redirect_neigh() was merely setting the new dst entry via skb_dst_set() without dropping an existing one first.

EPSS: 0.006 (45.3th 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

  • Linux — versions b4ab31414970a7a03a5d55d75083f2c101a30592, 5.10, 0

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-40183?
CVE-2025-40183 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2025-11-12.
How severe is CVE-2025-40183?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.