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-2025-21790 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 Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 12th 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-2025-5142
Vulnerability Data
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: vxlan: check vxlan_vnigroup_init() return value vxlan_init() must check vxlan_vnigroup_init() success otherwise a crash happens later, spotted by syzbot. Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc000000002c: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT…
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SMP KASAN NOPTI KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000160-0x0000000000000167] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 7313 Comm: syz-executor147 Not tainted 6.14.0-rc1-syzkaller-00276-g69b54314c975 #0 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 1.16.3-debian-1.16.3-2~bpo12+1 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:vxlan_vnigroup_uninit+0x89/0x500 drivers/net/vxlan/vxlan_vnifilter.c:912 Code: 00 48 8b 44 24 08 4c 8b b0 98 41 00 00 49 8d 86 60 01 00 00 48 89 c2 48 89 44 24 10 48 b8 00 00 00 00 00 fc ff df 48 c1 ea 03 <80> 3c 02 00 0f 85 4d 04 00 00 49 8b 86 60 01 00 00 48 ba 00 00 00 RSP: 0018:ffffc9000cc1eea8 EFLAGS: 00010202 RAX: dffffc0000000000 RBX: 0000000000000001 RCX: ffffffff8672effb RDX: 000000000000002c RSI: ffffffff8672ecb9 RDI: ffff8880461b4f18 RBP: ffff8880461b4ef4 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: 0000000000000000 R10: 0000000000000001 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: 0000000000020000 R13: ffff8880461b0d80 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: dffffc0000000000 FS: 00007fecfa95d6c0(0000) GS:ffff88806a600000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00007fecfa95cfb8 CR3: 000000004472c000 CR4: 0000000000352ef0 DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 Call Trace: <TASK> vxlan_uninit+0x1ab/0x200 drivers/net/vxlan/vxlan_core.c:2942 unregister_netdevice_many_notify+0x12d6/0x1f30 net/core/dev.c:11824 unregister_netdevice_many net/core/dev.c:11866 [inline] unregister_netdevice_queue+0x307/0x3f0 net/core/dev.c:11736 register_netdevice+0x1829/0x1eb0 net/core/dev.c:10901 __vxlan_dev_create+0x7c6/0xa30 drivers/net/vxlan/vxlan_core.c:3981 vxlan_newlink+0xd1/0x130 drivers/net/vxlan/vxlan_core.c:4407 rtnl_newlink_create net/core/rtnetlink.c:3795 [inline] __rtnl_newlink net/core/rtnetlink.c:3906 [inline]
- 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 SDLC mandates defensive coding practices that can prevent NULL dereferences.
Application security requirements can specify input validation and pointer-safety rules.
Secure architecture principles encourage defensive design that avoids unsafe pointer use.
Secure coding standards directly require NULL-pointer checks and safe dereference patterns.