---
cve: "CVE-2025-21737"
severity: "MEDIUM"
cvss: 5.5
epss: "21%"
vendor: "Linux"
kev: false
exploited: false
published: "2025-02-27 03:15:14"
tags: [cve, security, medium]
source: tsecurity.de CVE-Dossier
exported: "2026-09-17T20:49:44+02:00"
---

# CVE-2025-21737

> 5.5 MEDIUM

## Beschreibung

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

ceph: fix memory leak in ceph_mds_auth_match()

We now free the temporary target path substring allocation on every
possible branch, instead of omitting the default branch.  In some
cases, a memory leak occured, which could rapidly crash the system
(depending on how many file accesses were attempted).

This was detected in production because it caused a continuous memory
growth, eventually triggering kernel OOM and completely hard-locking
the kernel.

Relevant kmemleak stacktrace:

    unreferenced object 0xffff888131e69900 (size 128):
      comm "git", pid 66104, jiffies 4295435999
      hex dump (first 32 bytes):
        76 6f 6c 75 6d 65 73 2f 63 6f 6e 74 61 69 6e 65  volumes/containe
        72 73 2f 67 69 74 65 61 2f 67 69 74 65 61 2f 67  rs/gitea/gitea/g
      backtrace (crc 2f3bb450):
        [] __kmalloc_noprof+0x359/0x510
        [] ceph_mds_check_access+0x5bf/0x14e0 [ceph]
        [] ceph_open+0x312/0xd80 [ceph]
        [] do_dentry_open+0x456/0x1120
        [] vfs_open+0x79/0x360
        [] path_openat+0x1de5/0x4390
        [] do_filp_open+0x19c/0x3c0
        [] do_sys_openat2+0x141/0x180
        [] __x64_sys_open+0xe5/0x1a0
        [] do_syscall_64+0xb7/0x210
        [] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f

It can be triggered by mouting a subdirectory of a CephFS filesystem,
and then trying to access files on this subdirectory with an auth token
using a path-scoped capability:

    $ ceph auth get client.services
    [client.services]
            key = REDACTED
            caps mds = "allow rw fsname=cephfs path=/volumes/"
            caps mon = "allow r fsname=cephfs"
            caps osd = "allow rw tag cephfs data=cephfs"

    $ cat /proc/self/mounts
    services@[REDACTED].cephfs=/volumes/containers /ceph/containers ceph rw,noatime,name=services,secret=,ms_mode=prefer-crc,mount_timeout=300,acl,mon_addr=[REDACTED]:3300,recover_session=clean 0 0

    $ seq 1 1000000 | xargs -P32 --replace={} touch /ceph/containers/file-{} && \
    seq 1 1000000 | xargs -P32 --replace={} cat /ceph/containers/file-{}

[ idryomov: combine if statements, rename rc to path_matched and make
            it a bool, formatting ]

## CVSS-Vektor

```
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
```

| Metrik | Wert | Bewertung |
|---|---|---|
| AV Angriffsvektor | Lokal | good |
| AC Komplexität | Gering | bad |
| PR Privilegien | Gering | warn |
| UI Interaktion | Keine | bad |
| S Scope | Unverändert | good |
| C Vertraulichkeit | Keine | good |
| I Integrität | Keine | good |
| A Verfügbarkeit | Hoch | bad |

## Patch verfügbar (OSV)

- Kernel ≥ 6.12.14
- Kernel ≥ 6.13.3

## Referenzen

- <https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/146109fe936ac07f8f60cd6267543688985b96bc>
- <https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2b6086c5efe5c7bd6e0eb440d96c26ca0d20d9d7>
- <https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3b7d93db450e9d8ead80d75e2a303248f1528c35>

---
_Exportiert aus dem [tsecurity.de CVE-Dossier](https://tsecurity.de/cve?cve=CVE-2025-21737) · Datenquellen: EUVD (ENISA), NVD, OSV, CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS, Exploit-DB, BSI BITS_