Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-21878)

Summary

Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-21878). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Mitigation: upgrade to 5.10.235, 5.15.179, 6.1.130, 6.6.81, 6.12.18, 6.13.6 or later.

Original description

The description as published by the source.

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

i2c: npcm: disable interrupt enable bit before devm_request_irq

The customer reports that there is a soft lockup issue related to
the i2c driver. After checking, the i2c module was doing a tx transfer
and the bmc machine reboots in the middle of the i2c transaction, the i2c
module keeps the status without being reset.

Due to such an i2c module status, the i2c irq handler keeps getting
triggered since the i2c irq handler is registered in the kernel booting
process after the bmc machine is doing a warm rebooting.
The continuous triggering is stopped by the soft lockup watchdog timer.

Disable the interrupt enable bit in the i2c module before calling
devm_request_irq to fix this issue since the i2c relative status bit
is read-only.

Here is the soft lockup log.
[ 28.176395] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 26s! [swapper/0:1]
[ 28.183351] Modules linked in:
[ 28.186407] CPU: 0 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 5.15.120-yocto-s-dirty-bbebc78 #1
[ 28.201174] pstate: 40000005 (nZcv daif -PAN -UAO -TCO -DIT -SSBS BTYPE=--)
[ 28.208128] pc : __do_softirq+0xb0/0x368
[ 28.212055] lr : __do_softirq+0x70/0x368
[ 28.215972] sp : ffffff8035ebca00
[ 28.219278] x29: ffffff8035ebca00 x28: 0000000000000002 x27: ffffff80071a3780
[ 28.226412] x26: ffffffc008bdc000 x25: ffffffc008bcc640 x24: ffffffc008be50c0
[ 28.233546] x23: ffffffc00800200c x22: 0000000000000000 x21: 000000000000001b
[ 28.24…

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-2025-21878 has been found in Kernel.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade Kernel to 5.10.235, 5.15.179, 6.1.130, 6.6.81, 6.12.18, 6.13.6 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "Kernel CVE-2025-21878" on the vendor's site.

CVE-2025-21878 (Kernel)
Patched: 5.10.235, 5.15.179, 6.1.130, 6.6.81, 6.12.18, 6.13.6 — 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 5.10.235, 5.15.179, 6.1.130, 6.6.81, 6.12.18, 6.13.6.

🛡️ 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 5.10.235, 5.15.179, 6.1.130, 6.6.81, 6.12.18, 6.13.6
```
ステージング環境で 5.10.235, 5.15.179, 6.1.130, 6.6.81, 6.12.18, 6.13.6 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":"5.8.0"},{"fixed":"5.10.235"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"5.11.0"},{"fixed":"5.15.179"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"5.16.0"},{"fixed":"6.1.130"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.2.0"},{"fixed":"6.6.81"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.7.0"},{"fixed":"6.12.18"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.13.0"},{"fixed":"6.13.6"}]}]

Fix status by distribution

Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE

BellSoft Alpaquita BELL-CVE-2025-21878 linux-lts Fixed in: 6.1.130-r0
Debian DEBIAN-CVE-2025-21878 linux Fixed in: 5.10.237-1
Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2025-21878 linux-hwe-edge