Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-21654)

Summary

Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-21654). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Mitigation: upgrade to 6.6.74, 6.12.10 or later.

Original description

The description as published by the source.

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

ovl: support encoding fid from inode with no alias

Dmitry Safonov reported that a WARN_ON() assertion can be trigered by
userspace when calling inotify_show_fdinfo() for an overlayfs watched
inode, whose dentry aliases were discarded with drop_caches.

The WARN_ON() assertion in inotify_show_fdinfo() was removed, because
it is possible for encoding file handle to fail for other reason, but
the impact of failing to encode an overlayfs file handle goes beyond
this assertion.

As shown in the LTP test case mentioned in the link below, failure to
encode an overlayfs file handle from a non-aliased inode also leads to
failure to report an fid with FAN_DELETE_SELF fanotify events.

As Dmitry notes in his analyzis of the problem, ovl_encode_fh() fails
if it cannot find an alias for the inode, but this failure can be fixed.
ovl_encode_fh() seldom uses the alias and in the case of non-decodable
file handles, as is often the case with fanotify fid info,
ovl_encode_fh() never needs to use the alias to encode a file handle.

Defer finding an alias until it is actually needed so ovl_encode_fh()
will not fail in the common case of FAN_DELETE_SELF fanotify events.

Source: OSV.dev (Open Source Vulnerabilities) NVD OSV

Auto-generated summary

Assembled by SecPulse from the source data (CVSS, CWE, affected versions) using templates — no AI involved. Check the original description and references below for exact details.

A vulnerability tracked as CVE-2025-21654 has been found in Kernel.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade Kernel to 6.6.74, 6.12.10 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "Kernel CVE-2025-21654" on the vendor's site.

CVE-2025-21654 (Kernel)
Patched: 6.6.74, 6.12.10 — apply immediately
Plan: 1) Audit SBOM/dependencies, 2) Stage→prod upgrade, 3) Add WAF/proxy monitoring on affected endpoints, 4) Hunt IOCs in logs.
Refs: see the GHSA / vendor advisory / patched release linked on this page.

❓ What is the problem

A vulnerability (unclassified) exists in Kernel.

📍 Affected scope

Check the vendor advisory for the affected versions of Kernel.

🔥 Severity

Severity: ?. Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.

🔧 How to fix

Update to 6.6.74, 6.12.10.

🛡️ Workaround

Until the patch is applied: disable the affected feature, apply WAF rules, or restrict access via network ACLs.

🔍 Detection

Search webserver/proxy logs for unusual request patterns matching this CVE's known IOCs. Run grep -r 'Kernel' . against your dependency files (package-lock.json, requirements.txt, go.sum) to find affected services.

Response actions

Concrete steps and command examples for SOC/SRE teams to execute in order

1
Identify exposure identify
```
grep -r 'Kernel' . | grep -v node_modules
```
リポジトリと本番環境の依存ファイル (package-lock.json / requirements.txt / go.sum / Gemfile.lock 等) で Kernel を grep し、稼働しているサービス・バージョンを把握する。
2
Apply patch patch
```
Upgrade Kernel to 6.6.74, 6.12.10
```
ステージング環境で 6.6.74, 6.12.10 に上げて回帰テスト → 本番反映。回帰テストはアプリの主要ハッピーパスを含めること。
3
Post-deployment verification verify
```
Confirm patched version is live in production
```
パッチ適用後、ステージングで PoC または同等の悪用パターンを再現して脆弱性が閉じたことを確認。本番ではアクセスログ・WAF でアラート再発が無いか継続監視。

Affected packages

Linux Kernel

[{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.6.0"},{"fixed":"6.6.74"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.7.0"},{"fixed":"6.12.10"}]}]

Fix status by distribution

Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE

BellSoft Alpaquita BELL-CVE-2025-21654 linux-lts Fixed in: 6.12.41-r0
Debian DEBIAN-CVE-2025-21654 linux Fixed in: 6.12.10-1
Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2025-21654 linux-hwe-edge