CVE-2025-21692
Published: 10 February 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-21692 is a high-severity Improper Validation of Array Index (CWE-129) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 7.8 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Privilege Escalation (T1068); ranked at the 5.9th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 SI-10 (Information Input Validation) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Requires timely identification, testing, and installation of patches for the specific out-of-bounds indexing flaw in the Linux kernel's ETS qdisc, directly eliminating the vulnerability.
Mandates validation of information inputs such as the class ID (clid) in netlink messages to prevent improper array indexing and OOB access in ets_class_from_arg().
Implements memory protection mechanisms like kernel ASLR and guard pages to mitigate exploitation impacts of the OOB array access in the ETS scheduler.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
The CVE describes a local out-of-bounds array indexing flaw in the Linux kernel's ETS qdisc that a low-privileged attacker can trigger via crafted netlink messages to cause memory corruption and achieve privilege escalation.
NVD Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: sched: fix ets qdisc OOB Indexing Haowei Yan <g1042620637@gmail.com> found that ets_class_from_arg() can index an Out-Of-Bound class in ets_class_from_arg() when passed clid of 0. The overflow may cause local…
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privilege escalation. [ 18.852298] ------------[ cut here ]------------ [ 18.853271] UBSAN: array-index-out-of-bounds in net/sched/sch_ets.c:93:20 [ 18.853743] index 18446744073709551615 is out of range for type 'ets_class [16]' [ 18.854254] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 1275 Comm: poc Not tainted 6.12.6-dirty #17 [ 18.854821] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.15.0-1 04/01/2014 [ 18.856532] Call Trace: [ 18.857441] <TASK> [ 18.858227] dump_stack_lvl+0xc2/0xf0 [ 18.859607] dump_stack+0x10/0x20 [ 18.860908] __ubsan_handle_out_of_bounds+0xa7/0xf0 [ 18.864022] ets_class_change+0x3d6/0x3f0 [ 18.864322] tc_ctl_tclass+0x251/0x910 [ 18.864587] ? lock_acquire+0x5e/0x140 [ 18.865113] ? __mutex_lock+0x9c/0xe70 [ 18.866009] ? __mutex_lock+0xa34/0xe70 [ 18.866401] rtnetlink_rcv_msg+0x170/0x6f0 [ 18.866806] ? __lock_acquire+0x578/0xc10 [ 18.867184] ? __pfx_rtnetlink_rcv_msg+0x10/0x10 [ 18.867503] netlink_rcv_skb+0x59/0x110 [ 18.867776] rtnetlink_rcv+0x15/0x30 [ 18.868159] netlink_unicast+0x1c3/0x2b0 [ 18.868440] netlink_sendmsg+0x239/0x4b0 [ 18.868721] ____sys_sendmsg+0x3e2/0x410 [ 18.869012] ___sys_sendmsg+0x88/0xe0 [ 18.869276] ? rseq_ip_fixup+0x198/0x260 [ 18.869563] ? rseq_update_cpu_node_id+0x10a/0x190 [ 18.869900] ? trace_hardirqs_off+0x5a/0xd0 [ 18.870196] ? syscall_exit_to_user_mode+0xcc/0x220 [ 18.870547] ? do_syscall_64+0x93/0x150 [ 18.870821] ? __memcg_slab_free_hook+0x69/0x290 [ 18.871157] __sys_sendmsg+0x69/0xd0 [ 18.871416] __x64_sys_sendmsg+0x1d/0x30 [ 18.871699] x64_sys_call+0x9e2/0x2670 [ 18.871979] do_syscall_64+0x87/0x150 [ 18.873280] ? do_syscall_64+0x93/0x150 [ 18.874742] ? lock_release+0x7b/0x160 [ 18.876157] ? do_user_addr_fault+0x5ce/0x8f0 [ 18.877833] ? irqentry_exit_to_user_mode+0xc2/0x210 [ 18.879608] ? irqentry_exit+0x77/0xb0 [ 18.879808] ? clear_bhb_loop+0x15/0x70 [ 18.880023] ? clear_bhb_loop+0x15/0x70 [ 18.880223] ? clear_bhb_loop+0x15/0x70 [ 18.880426] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e [ 18.880683] RIP: 0033:0x44a957 [ 18.880851] Code: ff ff e8 fc 00 00 00 66 2e 0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 00 66 90 f3 0f 1e fa 64 8b 04 25 18 00 00 00 85 c0 75 10 b8 2e 00 00 00 0f 05 <48> 3d 00 f0 ff ff 77 51 c3 48 83 ec 28 89 54 24 1c 48 8974 24 10 [ 18.881766] RSP: 002b:00007ffcdd00fad8 EFLAGS: 00000246 ORIG_RAX: 000000000000002e [ 18.882149] RAX: ffffffffffffffda RBX: 00007ffcdd010db8 RCX: 000000000044a957 [ 18.882507] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 00007ffcdd00fb70 RDI: 0000000000000003 [ 18.885037] RBP: 00007ffcdd010bc0 R08: 000000000703c770 R09: 000000000703c7c0 [ 18.887203] R10: 0000000000000080 R11: 0000000000000246 R12: 0000000000000001 [ 18.888026] R13: 00007ffcdd010da8 R14: 00000000004ca7d0 R15: 0000000000000001 [ 18.888395] </TASK> [ 18.888610] ---[ end trace ]---
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-21692 is an out-of-bounds array indexing vulnerability in the Linux kernel's network scheduler (net/sched/sch_ets.c), specifically in the ets_class_from_arg() function of the ETS (Enhanced Transmission Selection) qdisc. When passed a class ID (clid) of 0, the function indexes beyond the bounds of the ets_class array (size 16), as evidenced by a UBSAN report showing an index of 18446744073709551615. This flaw was discovered by Haowei Yan and resolved in kernel commits, with a CVSS v3.1 score of 7.8 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) and mapped to CWE-129 (Improper Validation of Array Index).
A local attacker with low privileges can exploit this vulnerability by sending crafted netlink messages via the sendmsg() syscall to the rtnetlink socket, targeting tc_ctl_tclass() and ets_class_change(). The stack trace from a proof-of-concept (poc) demonstrates the trigger path from user space through netlink_unicast(), rtnetlink_rcv(), and into the ETS class handling code, resulting in undefined behavior that may enable local privilege escalation due to the high confidentiality, integrity, and availability impacts.
Mitigation involves applying the upstream kernel patches from the referenced stable branch commits, including 03c56665dab1f4ac844bc156652d50d639093fa5, 1332c6ed446be787f901ed1064ec6a3c694f028a, 997f6ec4208b23c87daf9f044689685f091826f7, bcf0d815e728a3a304b50455b32a3170c16e1eaa, and d62b04fca4340a0d468d7853bd66e511935a18cb, available at git.kernel.org. Systems running affected kernel versions should update to incorporate these fixes.
Details
- CWE(s)