UBUNTU-CVE-2025-21864
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tcp: drop secpath at the same time as we currently drop dst Xiumei reported hitting the WARN in xfrm6_tunnel_net_exit while running tests that boil down to: - create a pair of netns - run a basic TCP test over ipcomp6 - delete the pair of netns The xfrm_state found on spi_byaddr was not deleted at the time we delete the netns, because we still have a reference on it. This lingering reference comes from a secpath (which holds a ref on the xfrm_state), which is still attached to an skb. This skb is not leaked, it ends up on sk_receive_queue and then gets defer-free'd by skb_attempt_defer_free. The problem happens when we defer freeing an skb (push it on one CPU's defer_list), and don't flush that list before the netns is deleted. In that case, we still have a reference on the xfrm_state that we don't expect at this point. We already drop the skb's dst in the TCP receive path when it's no longer needed, so let's also drop the secpath. At this point, tcp_filter has already called into the LSM hooks that may require the secpath, so it should not be needed anymore. However, in some of those places, the MPTCP extension has just been attached to the skb, so we cannot simply drop all extensions.
02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE
Affected packages
11 explicit affected versions
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26 explicit affected versions
45 explicit affected versions
37 explicit affected versions
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13 explicit affected versions
43 explicit affected versions
10 explicit affected versions
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26 explicit affected versions
14 explicit affected versions
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78 explicit affected versions
11 explicit affected versions
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21 explicit affected versions
03 / CONNECTIONS
Connected vulnerabilities
04 / EVIDENCE
Source records
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: tcp: drop secpath at the same time as we currently drop dst Xiumei reported hitting the WARN in xfrm6_tunnel_net_exit while running tests that boil down to: - create a pair of netns - run a basic TCP test over ipcomp6 - delete the pair of netns The xfrm_state found on spi_byaddr was not deleted at the time we delete the netns, because we still have a reference on it. This lingering reference comes from a secpath (which holds a ref on the xfrm_state), which is still attached to an skb. This skb is not leaked, it ends up on sk_receive_queue and then gets defer-free'd by skb_attempt_defer_free. The problem happens when we defer freeing an skb (push it on one CPU's defer_list), and don't flush that list before the netns is deleted. In that case, we still have a reference on the xfrm_state that we don't expect at this point. We already drop the skb's dst in the TCP receive path when it's no longer needed, so let's also drop the secpath. At this point, tcp_filter has already called into the LSM hooks that may require the secpath, so it should not be needed anymore. However, in some of those places, the MPTCP extension has just been attached to the skb, so we cannot simply drop all extensions.
05 / REFERENCES
Further evidence
- https://git.kernel.org/linus/9b6412e6979f6f9e0632075f8f008937b5cd4efd
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/69cafd9413084cd5012cf5d7c7ec6f3d493726d9
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/87858bbf21da239ace300d61dd209907995c0491
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9b6412e6979f6f9e0632075f8f008937b5cd4efd
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cd34a07f744451e2ecf9005bb7d24d0b2fb83656
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f1d5e6a5e468308af7759cf5276779d3155c5e98
- https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2025-21864
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7521-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7521-2
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7521-3
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7703-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7703-2
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7703-3
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7703-4
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7719-1
- https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-7737-1
- https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-21864