Vulnerabilities > CVE-2025-21920 - Out-of-bounds Read vulnerability in Linux Kernel
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: vlan: enforce underlying device type Currently, VLAN devices can be created on top of non-ethernet devices. Besides the fact that it doesn't make much sense, this also causes a bug which leaks the address of a kernel function to usermode. When creating a VLAN device, we initialize GARP (garp_init_applicant) and MRP (mrp_init_applicant) for the underlying device. As part of the initialization process, we add the multicast address of each applicant to the underlying device, by calling dev_mc_add. __dev_mc_add uses dev->addr_len to determine the length of the new multicast address. This causes an out-of-bounds read if dev->addr_len is greater than 6, since the multicast addresses provided by GARP and MRP are only 6 bytes long. This behaviour can be reproduced using the following commands: ip tunnel add gretest mode ip6gre local ::1 remote ::2 dev lo ip l set up dev gretest ip link add link gretest name vlantest type vlan id 100 Then, the following command will display the address of garp_pdu_rcv: ip maddr show | grep 01:80:c2:00:00:21 Fix the bug by enforcing the type of the underlying device during VLAN device initialization.
Vulnerable Configurations
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Overread Buffers An adversary attacks a target by providing input that causes an application to read beyond the boundary of a defined buffer. This typically occurs when a value influencing where to start or stop reading is set to reflect positions outside of the valid memory location of the buffer. This type of attack may result in exposure of sensitive information, a system crash, or arbitrary code execution.
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0fb7aa04c19eac4417f360a9f7611a60637bdacc
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/30e8aee77899173a82ae5ed89f536c096f20aaeb
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3561442599804905c3defca241787cd4546e99a7
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5a515d13e15536e82c5c7c83eb6cf5bc4827fee5
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7f1564b2b2072b7aa1ac75350e9560a07c7a44fd
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b33a534610067ade2bdaf2052900aaad99701353
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b6c72479748b7ea09f53ed64b223cee6463dc278
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fa40ebef69234e39ec2d26930d045f2fb9a8cb2b