CVE-2025-21647: sched: sch_cake: add bounds checks to host bulk flow fairness counts

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2025-21647 is a high (CVSS 7.3) Out-of-bounds Read vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.28% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 20.9% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 19-01-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 15-10-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: sched: sch_cake: add bounds checks to host bulk flow fairness counts Even though we fixed a logic error in the commit cited below, syzbot still managed to trigger an underflow of the per-host bulk flow counters, leading to an out of bounds memory access. To avoid any such logic errors causing out of bounds memory accesses, this commit factors out all accesses to the per-host bulk flow counters to a series of helpers that perform bounds-checking before any increments and decrements. This also has the benefit of improving readability by moving the conditional checks for the flow mode into these helpers, instead of having them spread out throughout the code (which was the cause of the original logic error). As part of this change, the flow quantum calculation is consolidated into a helper function, which means that the dithering applied to the ost load scaling is now applied both in the DRR rotation and when a sparse flow's quantum is first initiated. The only user-visible effect of this is that the maximum packet size that can be sent while a flow stays sparse will now vary with +/- one byte in some cases. This should not make a noticeable difference in practice, and thus it's not worth complicating the code to preserve the old behaviour.

• CWE-125Out-of-bounds ReadThe product reads data past the end, or before the beginning, of the intended buffer.