CVE-2025-21981: linux

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2025-21981 is a medium (CVSS 5.5) vulnerability in linux. EPSS estimates a 0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8.5% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 01-04-2025
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 11-05-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ice: fix memory leak in aRFS after reset Fix aRFS (accelerated Receive Flow Steering) structures memory leak by adding a checker to verify if aRFS memory is already allocated while configuring VSI. aRFS objects are allocated in two cases: - as part of VSI initialization (at probe), and - as part of reset handling However, VSI reconfiguration executed during reset involves memory allocation one more time, without prior releasing already allocated resources. This led to the memory leak with the following signature: [root@os-delivery ~]# cat /sys/kernel/debug/kmemleak unreferenced object 0xff3c1ca7252e6000 (size 8192): comm "kworker/0:0", pid 8, jiffies 4296833052 hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ................ backtrace (crc 0): [<ffffffff991ec485>] __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x275/0x340 [<ffffffffc0a6e06a>] ice_init_arfs+0x3a/0xe0 [ice] [<ffffffffc09f1027>] ice_vsi_cfg_def+0x607/0x850 [ice] [<ffffffffc09f244b>] ice_vsi_setup+0x5b/0x130 [ice] [<ffffffffc09c2131>] ice_init+0x1c1/0x460 [ice] [<ffffffffc09c64af>] ice_probe+0x2af/0x520 [ice] [<ffffffff994fbcd3>] local_pci_probe+0x43/0xa0 [<ffffffff98f07103>] work_for_cpu_fn+0x13/0x20 [<ffffffff98f0b6d9>] process_one_work+0x179/0x390 [<ffffffff98f0c1e9>] worker_thread+0x239/0x340 [<ffffffff98f14abc>] kthread+0xcc/0x100 [<ffffffff98e45a6d>] ret_from_fork+0x2d/0x50 [<ffffffff98e083ba>] ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 ...

• CWE-401Missing Release of Memory after Effective LifetimeThe product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.