Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2025-21713 is a medium-severity NULL Pointer Dereference (CWE-476) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 5.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 10th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SA-11 (Developer Testing and Evaluation) and SA-15 (Development Process, Standards, and Tools) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-5240
Vulnerability Data
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: powerpc/pseries/iommu: Don't unset window if it was never set On pSeries, when user attempts to use the same vfio container used by different iommu group, the spapr_tce_set_window() returns -EPERM and…
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the subsequent cleanup leads to the below crash. Kernel attempted to read user page (308) - exploit attempt? BUG: Kernel NULL pointer dereference on read at 0x00000308 Faulting instruction address: 0xc0000000001ce358 Oops: Kernel access of bad area, sig: 11 [#1] NIP: c0000000001ce358 LR: c0000000001ce05c CTR: c00000000005add0 <snip> NIP [c0000000001ce358] spapr_tce_unset_window+0x3b8/0x510 LR [c0000000001ce05c] spapr_tce_unset_window+0xbc/0x510 Call Trace: spapr_tce_unset_window+0xbc/0x510 (unreliable) tce_iommu_attach_group+0x24c/0x340 [vfio_iommu_spapr_tce] vfio_container_attach_group+0xec/0x240 [vfio] vfio_group_fops_unl_ioctl+0x548/0xb00 [vfio] sys_ioctl+0x754/0x1580 system_call_exception+0x13c/0x330 system_call_vectored_common+0x15c/0x2ec <snip> --- interrupt: 3000 Fix this by having null check for the tbl passed to the spapr_tce_unset_window().
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Developer testing and evaluation (including static analysis) directly finds null-dereference bugs before deployment.
Documented development standards and tools can enforce null-safety rules and safe pointer usage.
Engineering principles can mandate defensive coding such as explicit null checks before dereference.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC practices (static analysis, code review, safe coding standards) directly prevent NULL dereference bugs during development.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing can detect NULL dereference defects before release.
Secure coding standards directly require NULL-pointer checks and safe dereference patterns.