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In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been...

Moderate severity Unreviewed Published Feb 27, 2025 to the GitHub Advisory Database • Updated Mar 6, 2025

Package

No package listedSuggest a package

Affected versions

Unknown

Patched versions

Unknown

Description

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

ceph: fix memory leak in ceph_mds_auth_match()

We now free the temporary target path substring allocation on every
possible branch, instead of omitting the default branch. In some
cases, a memory leak occured, which could rapidly crash the system
(depending on how many file accesses were attempted).

This was detected in production because it caused a continuous memory
growth, eventually triggering kernel OOM and completely hard-locking
the kernel.

Relevant kmemleak stacktrace:

unreferenced object 0xffff888131e69900 (size 128):
  comm "git", pid 66104, jiffies 4295435999
  hex dump (first 32 bytes):
    76 6f 6c 75 6d 65 73 2f 63 6f 6e 74 61 69 6e 65  volumes/containe
    72 73 2f 67 69 74 65 61 2f 67 69 74 65 61 2f 67  rs/gitea/gitea/g
  backtrace (crc 2f3bb450):
    [<ffffffffaa68fb49>] __kmalloc_noprof+0x359/0x510
    [<ffffffffc32bf1df>] ceph_mds_check_access+0x5bf/0x14e0 [ceph]
    [<ffffffffc3235722>] ceph_open+0x312/0xd80 [ceph]
    [<ffffffffaa7dd786>] do_dentry_open+0x456/0x1120
    [<ffffffffaa7e3729>] vfs_open+0x79/0x360
    [<ffffffffaa832875>] path_openat+0x1de5/0x4390
    [<ffffffffaa834fcc>] do_filp_open+0x19c/0x3c0
    [<ffffffffaa7e44a1>] do_sys_openat2+0x141/0x180
    [<ffffffffaa7e4945>] __x64_sys_open+0xe5/0x1a0
    [<ffffffffac2cc2f7>] do_syscall_64+0xb7/0x210
    [<ffffffffac400130>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f

It can be triggered by mouting a subdirectory of a CephFS filesystem,
and then trying to access files on this subdirectory with an auth token
using a path-scoped capability:

$ ceph auth get client.services
[client.services]
        key = REDACTED
        caps mds = "allow rw fsname=cephfs path=/volumes/"
        caps mon = "allow r fsname=cephfs"
        caps osd = "allow rw tag cephfs data=cephfs"

$ cat /proc/self/mounts
services@[REDACTED].cephfs=/volumes/containers /ceph/containers ceph rw,noatime,name=services,secret=<hidden>,ms_mode=prefer-crc,mount_timeout=300,acl,mon_addr=[REDACTED]:3300,recover_session=clean 0 0

$ seq 1 1000000 | xargs -P32 --replace={} touch /ceph/containers/file-{} && \
seq 1 1000000 | xargs -P32 --replace={} cat /ceph/containers/file-{}

[ idryomov: combine if statements, rename rc to path_matched and make
it a bool, formatting ]

References

Published by the National Vulnerability Database Feb 27, 2025
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Feb 27, 2025
Last updated Mar 6, 2025

Severity

Moderate

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS score

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

This score estimates the probability of this vulnerability being exploited within the next 30 days. Data provided by FIRST.
(18th percentile)

Weaknesses

CVE ID

CVE-2025-21737

GHSA ID

GHSA-755w-2h7x-xvj6

Source code

No known source code

Dependabot alerts are not supported on this advisory because it does not have a package from a supported ecosystem with an affected and fixed version.

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