VulnerabilityPublished 12 Mar 2025Updated 10 Nov 2026

CVE-2025-21861: Linux kernel · Use After Free

Affects Linux kernelSource GCVE Database

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.5 Medium.

Data as of 10 Nov 2026, 14:48 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

5.5Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

Thin evidence

One scorer or none

CVSS scores by source
CISA-ADP	CVSS 3.1	5.5

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

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 12 Mar 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponized: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 10 Nov 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponized: A Metasploit exploit module or Exploit-DB entry exists (Metasploit scanner modules do not count), or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

AI-suggested

A fix for this vulnerability has been implemented in the Linux kernel. Users and administrators should update to the fixed kernel versions once available. Since this is a kernel-level issue, applying the official kernel updates from the Linux distribution or mainline kernel is the recommended mitigation. No additional workarounds or mitigations are indicated.

Description

CVE-2025-21861 is a vulnerability in the Linux kernel's memory management subsystem related to device memory migration. The issue occurs when a folio (a memory page structure) that is to be freed is incorrectly added to the Least Recently Used (LRU) list during the migration finalization process. This happens because the memcg_data field of the folio is zeroed or left unset, causing the kernel's memory control group (memcg) code to behave improperly. While this does not cause direct data corruption, it triggers warnings and unnecessary operations in the kernel's memory management code.

Impact

The impact is limited to kernel warnings and unnecessary operations in the memory control group code due to improper handling of folios during device memory migration. There is no indication of confidentiality or integrity loss, but availability could be affected if the warnings lead to instability or crashes. The CVSS score of 5.5 (medium severity) reflects the potential for denial of service via kernel instability. No known exploits are reported in the wild.

Summary

The vulnerability in the Linux kernel affects the mm/migrate_device component where, after a memory migration operation, folios that are to be freed are mistakenly added to the LRU list if their memcg_data field is zero. This occurs because on successful migration, memcg_data of the old folio is set to zero, and on failure, memcg_data of the destination folio remains unset. Calling folio_putback_lru() on such folios causes them to be added to the LRU, which is improper and causes memcg warnings. The issue was identified during HMM self-tests and results in kernel warnings but likely no further harm beyond unnecessary LRU operations. The fix involves not adding folios to the LRU when they are to be freed and have memcg_data == 0, aligning the behavior with migrate_folio_move().

CWE-416Use After Free (opens in a new tab)
Variant weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #7
The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer.
Architecture and Design · Language Selection
Choose a language that provides automatic memory management.
Implementation · Attack Surface Reduction
When freeing pointers, be sure to set them to NULL once they are freed. However, the utilization of multiple or complex data structures may lower the usefulness of this strategy.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
XML Security (opens in a new tab)
Mass Assignment (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V13.3.1 (opens in a new tab)
V5.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
V5.1.3 (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 10 Nov 2026, 14:48 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-416

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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