CVE-2025-21714
Published: 27 February 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-21714 is a high-severity Use After Free (CWE-416) 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 7.7th 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 RA-5 (Vulnerability Monitoring and Scanning) and SI-2 (Flaw Remediation).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Mandates timely identification, testing, and installation of patches to remediate the use-after-free vulnerability in the mlx5_ib driver as referenced in the upstream kernel commits.
Implements memory protection mechanisms such as ASLR and non-executable memory to mitigate exploitation of the use-after-free condition in implicit ODP MR handling.
Requires vulnerability scanning to identify the presence of CVE-2025-21714 in affected Linux kernel versions using RDMA/mlx5 hardware.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Use-after-free in Linux kernel mlx5_ib driver enables local low-privileged attacker to trigger refcount underflow for arbitrary kernel code execution, directly facilitating privilege escalation.
NVD Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: RDMA/mlx5: Fix implicit ODP use after free Prevent double queueing of implicit ODP mr destroy work by using __xa_cmpxchg() to make sure this is the only time we are destroying…
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this specific mr. Without this change, we could try to invalidate this mr twice, which in turn could result in queuing a MR work destroy twice, and eventually the second work could execute after the MR was freed due to the first work, causing a user after free and trace below. refcount_t: underflow; use-after-free. WARNING: CPU: 2 PID: 12178 at lib/refcount.c:28 refcount_warn_saturate+0x12b/0x130 Modules linked in: bonding ib_ipoib vfio_pci ip_gre geneve nf_tables ip6_gre gre ip6_tunnel tunnel6 ipip tunnel4 ib_umad rdma_ucm mlx5_vfio_pci vfio_pci_core vfio_iommu_type1 mlx5_ib vfio ib_uverbs mlx5_core iptable_raw openvswitch nsh rpcrdma ib_iser libiscsi scsi_transport_iscsi rdma_cm iw_cm ib_cm ib_core xt_conntrack xt_MASQUERADE nf_conntrack_netlink nfnetlink xt_addrtype iptable_nat nf_nat br_netfilter rpcsec_gss_krb5 auth_rpcgss oid_registry overlay zram zsmalloc fuse [last unloaded: ib_uverbs] CPU: 2 PID: 12178 Comm: kworker/u20:5 Not tainted 6.5.0-rc1_net_next_mlx5_58c644e #1 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS rel-1.13.0-0-gf21b5a4aeb02-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 Workqueue: events_unbound free_implicit_child_mr_work [mlx5_ib] RIP: 0010:refcount_warn_saturate+0x12b/0x130 Code: 48 c7 c7 38 95 2a 82 c6 05 bc c6 fe 00 01 e8 0c 66 aa ff 0f 0b 5b c3 48 c7 c7 e0 94 2a 82 c6 05 a7 c6 fe 00 01 e8 f5 65 aa ff <0f> 0b 5b c3 90 8b 07 3d 00 00 00 c0 74 12 83 f8 01 74 13 8d 50 ff RSP: 0018:ffff8881008e3e40 EFLAGS: 00010286 RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: 0000000000000027 RDX: ffff88852c91b5c8 RSI: 0000000000000001 RDI: ffff88852c91b5c0 RBP: ffff8881dacd4e00 R08: 00000000ffffffff R09: 0000000000000019 R10: 000000000000072e R11: 0000000063666572 R12: ffff88812bfd9e00 R13: ffff8881c792d200 R14: ffff88810011c005 R15: ffff8881002099c0 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff88852c900000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00007f5694b5e000 CR3: 00000001153f6003 CR4: 0000000000370ea0 DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 Call Trace: <TASK> ? refcount_warn_saturate+0x12b/0x130 free_implicit_child_mr_work+0x180/0x1b0 [mlx5_ib] process_one_work+0x1cc/0x3c0 worker_thread+0x218/0x3c0 kthread+0xc6/0xf0 ret_from_fork+0x1f/0x30 </TASK>
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-21714 is a use-after-free vulnerability in the Linux kernel's RDMA/mlx5 subsystem, specifically affecting the mlx5_ib driver. The issue arises from improper handling of implicit On-Demand Paging (ODP) memory registrations (MRs), where double queueing of MR destroy work can occur without proper synchronization. This leads to a second destroy operation executing after the MR has been freed by the first, triggering a refcount underflow and use-after-free condition, as evidenced by kernel warnings in refcount_warn_saturate and traces from free_implicit_child_mr_work in the mlx5_ib module. The vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.8 (AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H) and is classified under CWE-416.
A local attacker with low privileges can exploit this vulnerability by triggering the faulty MR destroy logic in the mlx5_ib driver, potentially causing a kernel use-after-free. Successful exploitation could result in high-impact confidentiality, integrity, and availability violations, such as arbitrary code execution in kernel space, privilege escalation, or system denial of service via crashes.
Mitigation involves applying the upstream kernel patches referenced in the stable repository commits: 7cc8f681f6d4ae4478ae0f60485fc768f2b450da, d3d930411ce390e532470194296658a960887773, and edfb65dbb9ffd3102f3ff4dd21316158e56f1976, which use __xa_cmpxchg() to prevent double queueing of implicit ODP MR destroy work. Security practitioners should update affected Linux kernels, particularly those using RDMA with Mellanox mlx5 hardware, and monitor for the associated refcount underflow traces in logs.
Details
- CWE(s)