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CVE-2025-21854: sockmap, vsock: For connectible sockets allow only connected

Description

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

sockmap, vsock: For connectible sockets allow only connected

sockmap expects all vsocks to have a transport assigned, which is expressed
in vsock_proto::psock_update_sk_prot(). However, there is an edge case
where an unconnected (connectible) socket may lose its previously assigned
transport. This is handled with a NULL check in the vsock/BPF recv path.

Another design detail is that listening vsocks are not supposed to have any
transport assigned at all. Which implies they are not supported by the
sockmap. But this is complicated by the fact that a socket, before
switching to TCP_LISTEN, may have had some transport assigned during a
failed connect() attempt. Hence, we may end up with a listening vsock in a
sockmap, which blows up quickly:

KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000120-0x0000000000000127]
CPU: 7 UID: 0 PID: 56 Comm: kworker/7:0 Not tainted 6.14.0-rc1+
Workqueue: vsock-loopback vsock_loopback_work
RIP: 0010:vsock_read_skb+0x4b/0x90
Call Trace:
sk_psock_verdict_data_ready+0xa4/0x2e0
virtio_transport_recv_pkt+0x1ca8/0x2acc
vsock_loopback_work+0x27d/0x3f0
process_one_work+0x846/0x1420
worker_thread+0x5b3/0xf80
kthread+0x35a/0x700
ret_from_fork+0x2d/0x70
ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30

For connectible sockets, instead of relying solely on the state of
vsk->transport, tell sockmap to only allow those representing established
connections. This aligns with the behaviour for AF_INET and...

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2025-21854

Affected Products

Vendor: Linux, Linux

Product: Linux, Linux

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.02% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 1.68% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-04-10 (when was this score calculated)

References

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-21854
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cc9a7832ede53ade1ba9991f0e27314caa4029d8
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/22b683217ad2112791a708693cb236507abd637a
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f7b473e35986835cc2813fef7b9d40336a09247e
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/8fb5bb169d17cdd12c2dcc2e96830ed487d77a0f

Timeline