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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2025-21781 json

batman-adv: fix panic during interface removal

published 2025-02-27 20 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2025-5148

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 13%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

batman-adv: fix panic during interface removal

Reference counting is used to ensure that batadv_hardif_neigh_node and batadv_hard_iface are not freed before/during batadv_v_elp_throughput_metric_update work is finished.

But there isn't a guarantee that the hard if will remain associated with a soft interface up until the work is finished.

This fixes a crash triggered by reboot that looks like this:

Call trace: batadv_v_mesh_free+0xd0/0x4dc [batman_adv] batadv_v_elp_throughput_metric_update+0x1c/0xa4 process_one_work+0x178/0x398 worker_thread+0x2e8/0x4d0 kthread+0xd8/0xdc ret_from_fork+0x10/0x20

(the batadv_v_mesh_free call is misleading, and does not actually happen)

I was able to make the issue happen more reliably by changing hardif_neigh->bat_v.metric_work work to be delayed work. This allowed me to track down and confirm the fix.

[sven@narfation.org: prevent entering batadv_v_elp_get_throughput without soft_iface]

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.4.291, 5.10.235, 5.15.179, 6.1.129, 6.6.79, 6.12.16, 6.13.4, 6.14
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.129-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.12.16-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-21781

  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-216.236
  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-140.150
  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-78.78
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1146.156
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1084.91
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1035.37
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1149.158
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1083.92

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-21781

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-coco SLE Module for Confidential Computing Technical Preview 15 SP6 6.4.0-15061.21.coco15sp6.1
  • kernel-syms-coco SLE Module for Confidential Computing Technical Preview 15 SP6 6.4.0-15061.21.coco15sp6.1
  • kernel-coco_debug SLE Module for Confidential Computing Technical Preview 15 SP6 6.4.0-15061.21.coco15sp6.1
  • kernel-source-coco SLE Module for Confidential Computing Technical Preview 15 SP6 6.4.0-15061.21.coco15sp6.1
  • kernel-source Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-28.1
  • kernel-default Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-28.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-28.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-28.1.21.6

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:01919-1SUSE-SU-2025:20192-1SUSE-SU-2025:20270-1SUSE-SU-2025:20190-1SUSE-SU-2025:20260-1SUSE-SU-2025:1180-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2025-21781 updated

kernel: batman-adv: fix panic during interface removal

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.22% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 13% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.