Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HSummary
CVE-2025-21850 is a critical-severity Infinite Loop (CWE-835) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 33th 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 SI-2 (Flaw Remediation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2025-6396
Vulnerability Data
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: nvmet: Fix crash when a namespace is disabled The namespace percpu counter protects pending I/O, and we can only safely diable the namespace once the counter drop to zero. Otherwise…
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we end up with a crash when running blktests/nvme/058 (eg for loop transport): [ 2352.930426] [ T53909] Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000005: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN PTI [ 2352.930431] [ T53909] KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000028-0x000000000000002f] [ 2352.930434] [ T53909] CPU: 3 UID: 0 PID: 53909 Comm: kworker/u16:5 Tainted: G W 6.13.0-rc6 #232 [ 2352.930438] [ T53909] Tainted: [W]=WARN [ 2352.930440] [ T53909] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.3-3.fc41 04/01/2014 [ 2352.930443] [ T53909] Workqueue: nvmet-wq nvme_loop_execute_work [nvme_loop] [ 2352.930449] [ T53909] RIP: 0010:blkcg_set_ioprio+0x44/0x180 as the queue is already torn down when calling submit_bio(); So we need to init the percpu counter in nvmet_ns_enable(), and wait for it to drop to zero in nvmet_ns_disable() to avoid having I/O pending after the namespace has been disabled.
- 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 can discover unreachable loop exit conditions through static analysis, fuzzing, or execution tracing.
Flaw remediation processes identify and correct infinite-loop defects reported from testing or operations.
Requiring documented development processes and secure coding standards reduces introduction of loops whose termination conditions are unreachable.
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.
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 uncover infinite-loop conditions before release.
Secure development life cycle mandates practices that can detect and prevent infinite-loop defects.
Application security requirements can specify loop-termination rules, indirectly reducing the weakness.
Secure coding standards directly address loop termination and prevent infinite loops.
Secure architecture principles encourage designs that avoid unreachable exit conditions.
Change management can require review of loop logic when code is modified.