CVE-2025-21939: linux kernel vulnerability
CVE-2025-21939: high vulnerability affecting linux kernel. Check CVSS, KEV status, business impact and recommended administrator actions.
- CVSS
- 7.8 HIGH
- EPSS
- 11.51%
- Known exploited
- not in KEV
- Product
- linux kernel
What is known
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: drm/xe/hmm: Don't dereference struct page pointers without notifier lock The pnfs that we obtain from hmm_range_fault() point to pages that we don't have a reference on, and the guarantee that they are still in the cpu page-tables is that the notifier lock must be held and the notifier seqno is still valid. So while building the sg table and marking the pages accesses / dirty we need to hold this lock with a validated seqno. However, the lock is reclaim tainted which makes sg_alloc_table_from_pages_segment() unusable, since it internally allocates memory. Instead build the sg-table manually. For the non-iommu case this might lead to fewer coalesces, but if that's a problem it can be fixed up later in the resource cursor code. For the iommu case, the whole sg-table may still be coalesced to a single contigous device va region. This avoids marking pages that we don't own dirty and accessed, and it also avoid dereferencing struct pages that we don't own. v2: - Use assert to check whether hmm pfns are valid (Matthew Auld) - Take into account that large pages may cross range boundaries (Matthew Auld) v3: - Don't unnecessarily check for a non-freed sg-table. (Matthew Auld) - Add a missing up_read() in an error path. (Matthew Auld) (cherry picked from commit ea3e66d280ce2576664a862693d1da8fd324c317)
Business impact
Successful exploitation of CVE-2025-21939, a high vulnerability (CVSS 7.8) affecting linux kernel, may affect the confidentiality, integrity or availability of the vulnerable environment. The exact impact depends on the installed version, exposed interfaces and deployment configuration.
Recommended administrator action
Confirm whether linux kernel is present and compare installed versions with the vendor advisory and NVD record. Apply the vendor patch or documented mitigation; until remediation is complete, reduce exposure of affected interfaces, review relevant logs and monitor for indicators of exploitation. DataHouse can support version verification, managed patching, network exposure reduction, log review and backup validation for dedicated, cloud and colocated environments.