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CVE-2025-21777: ring-buffer: Validate the persistent meta data subbuf array

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ring-buffer: Validate the persistent meta data subbuf array

The meta data for a mapped ring buffer contains an array of indexes of all
the subbuffers. The first entry is the reader page, and the rest of the
entries lay out the order of the subbuffers in how the ring buffer link
list is to be created.

The validator currently makes sure that all the entries are within the
range of 0 and nr_subbufs. But it does not check if there are any
duplicates.

While working on the ring buffer, I corrupted this array, where I added
duplicates. The validator did not catch it and created the ring buffer
link list on top of it. Luckily, the corruption was only that the reader
page was also in the writer path and only presented corrupted data but did
not crash the kernel. But if there were duplicates in the writer side,
then it could corrupt the ring buffer link list and cause a crash.

Create a bitmask array with the size of the number of subbuffers. Then
clear it. When walking through the subbuf array checking to see if the
entries are within the range, test if its bit is already set in the
subbuf_mask. If it is, then there is duplicates and fail the validation.
If not, set the corresponding bit and continue.

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2025-21777

Affected Products

Vendor: Linux, Linux

Product: Linux, Linux

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.03% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 3.82% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-03-27 (when was this score calculated)

References

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-21777
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3ec743d558f111d8999aea24577ba66c65ee2eeb
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0d547a6f5e8fad26ebc12f501d7d19fccdbad6bf
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f5b95f1fa2ef3a03f49eeec658ba97e721412b32

Timeline