CVE-2025-21855: linux Use After Free

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2025-21855 is a high (CVSS 8.6) Use After Free vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.44% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 36.5% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 12-03-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 05-08-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ibmvnic: Don't reference skb after sending to VIOS Previously, after successfully flushing the xmit buffer to VIOS, the tx_bytes stat was incremented by the length of the skb. It is invalid to access the skb memory after sending the buffer to the VIOS because, at any point after sending, the VIOS can trigger an interrupt to free this memory. A race between reading skb->len and freeing the skb is possible (especially during LPM) and will result in use-after-free: ================================================================== BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in ibmvnic_xmit+0x75c/0x1808 [ibmvnic] Read of size 4 at addr c00000024eb48a70 by task hxecom/14495 <...> Call Trace: [c000000118f66cf0] [c0000000018cba6c] dump_stack_lvl+0x84/0xe8 (unreliable) [c000000118f66d20] [c0000000006f0080] print_report+0x1a8/0x7f0 [c000000118f66df0] [c0000000006f08f0] kasan_report+0x128/0x1f8 [c000000118f66f00] [c0000000006f2868] __asan_load4+0xac/0xe0 [c000000118f66f20] [c0080000046eac84] ibmvnic_xmit+0x75c/0x1808 [ibmvnic] [c000000118f67340] [c0000000014be168] dev_hard_start_xmit+0x150/0x358 <...> Freed by task 0: kasan_save_stack+0x34/0x68 kasan_save_track+0x2c/0x50 kasan_save_free_info+0x64/0x108 __kasan_mempool_poison_object+0x148/0x2d4 napi_skb_cache_put+0x5c/0x194 net_tx_action+0x154/0x5b8 handle_softirqs+0x20c/0x60c do_softirq_own_stack+0x6c/0x88 <...> The buggy address belongs to the object at c00000024eb48a00 which belongs to the cache skbuff_head_cache of size 224 ==================================================================

• CWE-416Use After FreeThe product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.