Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-68821)

Summary

Vulnerability in Kernel (CVE-2025-68821). Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure. Mitigation: upgrade to 5.15.198, 6.1.160, 6.6.120, 6.12.64, 6.18.3 or later.

Original description

The description as published by the source.

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

fuse: fix readahead reclaim deadlock

Commit e26ee4efbc79 ("fuse: allocate ff->release_args only if release is
needed") skips allocating ff->release_args if the server does not
implement open. However in doing so, fuse_prepare_release() now skips
grabbing the reference on the inode, which makes it possible for an
inode to be evicted from the dcache while there are inflight readahead
requests. This causes a deadlock if the server triggers reclaim while
servicing the readahead request and reclaim attempts to evict the inode
of the file being read ahead. Since the folio is locked during
readahead, when reclaim evicts the fuse inode and fuse_evict_inode()
attempts to remove all folios associated with the inode from the page
cache (truncate_inode_pages_range()), reclaim will block forever waiting
for the lock since readahead cannot relinquish the lock because it is
itself blocked in reclaim:

stack_trace(1504735)
folio_wait_bit_common (mm/filemap.c:1308:4)
folio_lock (./include/linux/pagemap.h:1052:3)
truncate_inode_pages_range (mm/truncate.c:336:10)
fuse_evict_inode (fs/fuse/inode.c:161:2)
evict (fs/inode.c:704:3)
dentry_unlink_inode (fs/dcache.c:412:3)
__dentry_kill (fs/dcache.c:615:3)
shrink_kill (fs/dcache.c:1060:12)
shrink_dentry_list (fs/dcache.c:1087:3)
prune_dcache_sb (fs/dcache.c:1168:2)
super_cache_scan (fs/super.c:221:10)
do_shrink_slab (mm/shrinker.c:435:9)
shrink_slab (mm/shrinker.c:…

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-2025-68821 has been found in Kernel.
Risk of unauthorized operations or information disclosure.
What to do: upgrade Kernel to 5.15.198, 6.1.160, 6.6.120, 6.12.64, 6.18.3 or later.
If unsure, ask your IT team or search "Kernel CVE-2025-68821" on the vendor's site.

CVE-2025-68821 (Kernel)
Patched: 5.15.198, 6.1.160, 6.6.120, 6.12.64, 6.18.3 — 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 5.15.198, 6.1.160, 6.6.120, 6.12.64, 6.18.3.

🛡️ 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 5.15.198, 6.1.160, 6.6.120, 6.12.64, 6.18.3
```
ステージング環境で 5.15.198, 6.1.160, 6.6.120, 6.12.64, 6.18.3 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":"0"},{"fixed":"5.15.198"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"5.16.0"},{"fixed":"6.1.160"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.2.0"},{"fixed":"6.6.120"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.7.0"},{"fixed":"6.12.64"}]},{"type":"ECOSYSTEM","events":[{"introduced":"6.9.0"},{"fixed":"6.18.3"}]}]

Fix status by distribution

Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE

BellSoft Alpaquita BELL-CVE-2025-68821 linux-lts Fixed in: 6.1.161-r0
Debian DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68821 linux Fixed in: 6.1.162-1
Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2025-68821 linux-hwe-edge