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

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2025-21777 is a medium (CVSS 5.5) vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 10.3% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 27-02-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 11-05-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

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.

No weakness data has been published for this record.