Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-22077

Linux Kernel 6.6.68 – 6.6.88

Published
16 April 2025
Modified
30 July 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 9.8
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0035 27th percentile
Risk Priority 70 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2025-22077 is a critical-severity Improper Locking (CWE-667) vulnerability in Linux Linux Kernel. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Endpoint Denial of Service (T1499); ranked at the 27th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: Revert "smb: client: fix TCP timers deadlock after rmmod" This reverts commit e9f2517a3e18a54a3943c098d2226b245d488801. Commit e9f2517a3e18 ("smb: client: fix TCP timers deadlock after rmmod") is intended to fix a null-ptr-deref in…

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LOCKDEP, which is mentioned as CVE-2024-54680, but is actually did not fix anything; The issue can be reproduced on top of it. [0] Also, it reverted the change by commit ef7134c7fc48 ("smb: client: Fix use-after-free of network namespace.") and introduced a real issue by reviving the kernel TCP socket. When a reconnect happens for a CIFS connection, the socket state transitions to FIN_WAIT_1. Then, inet_csk_clear_xmit_timers_sync() in tcp_close() stops all timers for the socket. If an incoming FIN packet is lost, the socket will stay at FIN_WAIT_1 forever, and such sockets could be leaked up to net.ipv4.tcp_max_orphans. Usually, FIN can be retransmitted by the peer, but if the peer aborts the connection, the issue comes into reality. I warned about this privately by pointing out the exact report [1], but the bogus fix was finally merged. So, we should not stop the timers to finally kill the connection on our side in that case, meaning we must not use a kernel socket for TCP whose sk->sk_net_refcnt is 0. The kernel socket does not have a reference to its netns to make it possible to tear down netns without cleaning up every resource in it. For example, tunnel devices use a UDP socket internally, but we can destroy netns without removing such devices and let it complete during exit. Otherwise, netns would be leaked when the last application died. However, this is problematic for TCP sockets because TCP has timers to close the connection gracefully even after the socket is close()d. The lifetime of the socket and its netns is different from the lifetime of the underlying connection. If the socket user does not maintain the netns lifetime, the timer could be fired after the socket is close()d and its netns is freed up, resulting in use-after-free. Actually, we have seen so many similar issues and converted such sockets to have a reference to netns. That's why I converted the CIFS client socket to have a reference to netns (sk->sk_net_refcnt == 1), which is somehow mentioned as out-of-scope of CIFS and technically wrong in e9f2517a3e18, but **is in-scope and right fix**. Regarding the LOCKDEP issue, we can prevent the module unload by bumping the module refcount when switching the LOCKDDEP key in sock_lock_init_class_and_name(). [2] For a while, let's revert the bogus fix. Note that now we can use sk_net_refcnt_upgrade() for the socket conversion, but I'll do so later separately to make backport easy.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Endpoint Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of services to users.
T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.
T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities in an attempt to elevate privileges.
T1548 Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism Privilege Escalation
Adversaries may circumvent mechanisms designed to control privilege elevation to gain higher-level permissions.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2024-40969Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2024-43863Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2024-56743Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2024-35997Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2026-45924Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2023-53031Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2025-21944Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2024-57903Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2024-40972Same product: Linux Linux Kernel
CVE-2024-35999Same product: Linux Linux Kernel

Affected Assets

linux
linux kernel
6.13, 6.15 · 6.6.68 — 6.6.88 · 6.12.7 — 6.12.25 · 6.13.1 — 6.14.4

Mitigating Controls

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 include code reviews, static analysis, and concurrency standards that prevent improper locking.

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.

finds

Security testing can detect race conditions and locking errors before release.

prevents

Secure development lifecycle includes concurrency and locking requirements that reduce improper locking defects.

prevents

Application security requirements can mandate proper lock acquisition/release patterns.

prevents

Secure architecture principles address thread-safety and resource synchronization.

prevents

Secure coding standards directly prohibit missing or incorrect lock usage.

prevents

Change management may catch locking issues introduced by modifications but does not prevent the weakness itself.

References