Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-21718

Memory Safety in Linux Kernel 2.6.12 – 6.1.129

Published
27 February 2025
Modified
14 July 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 7.0
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0016 6th percentile
Risk Priority 55 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2025-21718 is a high-severity Race Condition (CWE-362) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 7.0 (High).

Operationally, ranked at the 6th 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 CM-7 (Least Functionality) and AC-3 (Access Enforcement) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: rose: fix timer races against user threads Rose timers only acquire the socket spinlock, without checking if the socket is owned by one user thread. Add a check and…

more

rearm the timers if needed. BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in rose_timer_expiry+0x31d/0x360 net/rose/rose_timer.c:174 Read of size 2 at addr ffff88802f09b82a by task swapper/0/0 CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 0 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.13.0-rc5-syzkaller-00172-gd1bf27c4e176 #0 Hardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 09/13/2024 Call Trace: <IRQ> __dump_stack lib/dump_stack.c:94 [inline] dump_stack_lvl+0x241/0x360 lib/dump_stack.c:120 print_address_description mm/kasan/report.c:378 [inline] print_report+0x169/0x550 mm/kasan/report.c:489 kasan_report+0x143/0x180 mm/kasan/report.c:602 rose_timer_expiry+0x31d/0x360 net/rose/rose_timer.c:174 call_timer_fn+0x187/0x650 kernel/time/timer.c:1793 expire_timers kernel/time/timer.c:1844 [inline] __run_timers kernel/time/timer.c:2418 [inline] __run_timer_base+0x66a/0x8e0 kernel/time/timer.c:2430 run_timer_base kernel/time/timer.c:2439 [inline] run_timer_softirq+0xb7/0x170 kernel/time/timer.c:2449 handle_softirqs+0x2d4/0x9b0 kernel/softirq.c:561 __do_softirq kernel/softirq.c:595 [inline] invoke_softirq kernel/softirq.c:435 [inline] __irq_exit_rcu+0xf7/0x220 kernel/softirq.c:662 irq_exit_rcu+0x9/0x30 kernel/softirq.c:678 instr_sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt arch/x86/kernel/apic/apic.c:1049 [inline] sysvec_apic_timer_interrupt+0xa6/0xc0 arch/x86/kernel/apic/apic.c:1049 </IRQ>

CWE(s)

Related Threats

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Affected Assets

linux
linux kernel
2.6.12 — 6.1.129 · 6.2 — 6.6.76 · 6.7 — 6.12.13

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)
  • CM-7 Least Functionality
  • AC-3 Access Enforcement
  • SI-16 Memory Protection
Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 3 hardening rules · 3 OS baselines
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V10.4.2
  • V10.4.5
  • V15.1.3
  • V15.4.1

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

prevent

Disabling the unused ROSE protocol removes the vulnerable timer code path entirely from the kernel attack surface.

prevent

The root cause is missing ownership check before timer expiry accesses the socket; AC-3 enforces proper access mediation on kernel objects.

prevent

Memory protection mechanisms directly mitigate the slab use-after-free that occurs when rose_timer_expiry dereferences a freed socket.

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.

PR.PS-06 mostly match
prevents

Secure SDLC practices directly require proper synchronization primitives and concurrency testing that prevent race conditions.

ID.RA-01 partial match
prevents

Vulnerability identification processes can discover use-after-free issues via scanning or analysis but do not prevent their introduction.

PR.PS-02 partial match
prevents

Routine patching removes known use-after-free instances after they have been introduced in released software.

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.

detects

Security testing can detect race conditions, but does not prevent them at design or coding time.

prevents

Secure SDLC mandates concurrency controls and synchronization primitives that directly prevent race conditions.

prevents

Application security requirements can specify thread-safety and locking rules, but do not prescribe implementation details.

prevents

Secure architecture principles require proper synchronization and resource isolation, addressing the root cause of CWE-362.

prevents

Secure coding standards explicitly forbid unsafe concurrent access patterns and mandate atomic operations or locks.

prevents

Change-management processes help ensure memory-safety fixes are deployed consistently.

References