CVE-2025-21664
CVE-2025-21664CVE-2025-21664
linux / linux_kernel
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
dm thin: make get_first_thin use rcu-safe list first function
The documentation in rculist.h explains the absence of list_empty_rcu()
and cautions programmers against relying on a list_empty() ->
list_first() sequence in RCU safe code. This is because each of these
functions performs its own READ_ONCE() of the list head. This can lead
to a situation where the list_empty() sees a valid list entry, but the
subsequent list_first() sees a different view of list head state after a
modification.
In the case of dm-thin, this author had a production box crash from a GP
fault in the process_deferred_bios path. This function saw a valid list
head in get_first_thin() but when it subsequently dereferenced that and
turned it into a thin_c, it got the inside of the struct pool, since the
list was now empty and referring to itself. The kernel on which this
occurred printed both a warning about a refcount_t being saturated, and
Scoring
| CVSS | 7.8 () |
| Vector | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
| Last modified | 2026-07-30 |