linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-21868: net: allow small head cache usage with large MAX_SKB

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Message-ID: <2025032734-CVE-2025-21868-ef4f@gregkh>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2025 14:38:34 +0100
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-21868: net: allow small head cache usage with large MAX_SKB_FRAGS values

Description
===========

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

net: allow small head cache usage with large MAX_SKB_FRAGS values

Sabrina reported the following splat:

    WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 1 at net/core/dev.c:6935 netif_napi_add_weight_locked+0x8f2/0xba0
    Modules linked in:
    CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 1 Comm: swapper/0 Not tainted 6.14.0-rc1-net-00092-g011b03359038 #996
    Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS Arch Linux 1.16.3-1-1 04/01/2014
    RIP: 0010:netif_napi_add_weight_locked+0x8f2/0xba0
    Code: e8 c3 e6 6a fe 48 83 c4 28 5b 5d 41 5c 41 5d 41 5e 41 5f c3 cc cc cc cc c7 44 24 10 ff ff ff ff e9 8f fb ff ff e8 9e e6 6a fe <0f> 0b e9 d3 fe ff ff e8 92 e6 6a fe 48 8b 04 24 be ff ff ff ff 48
    RSP: 0000:ffffc9000001fc60 EFLAGS: 00010293
    RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: ffff88806ce48128 RCX: 1ffff11001664b9e
    RDX: ffff888008f00040 RSI: ffffffff8317ca42 RDI: ffff88800b325cb6
    RBP: ffff88800b325c40 R08: 0000000000000001 R09: ffffed100167502c
    R10: ffff88800b3a8163 R11: 0000000000000000 R12: ffff88800ac1c168
    R13: ffff88800ac1c168 R14: ffff88800ac1c168 R15: 0000000000000007
    FS:  0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff88806ce00000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000
    CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
    CR2: ffff888008201000 CR3: 0000000004c94001 CR4: 0000000000370ef0
    DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000
    DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400
    Call Trace:
    <TASK>
    gro_cells_init+0x1ba/0x270
    xfrm_input_init+0x4b/0x2a0
    xfrm_init+0x38/0x50
    ip_rt_init+0x2d7/0x350
    ip_init+0xf/0x20
    inet_init+0x406/0x590
    do_one_initcall+0x9d/0x2e0
    do_initcalls+0x23b/0x280
    kernel_init_freeable+0x445/0x490
    kernel_init+0x20/0x1d0
    ret_from_fork+0x46/0x80
    ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30
    </TASK>
    irq event stamp: 584330
    hardirqs last  enabled at (584338): [<ffffffff8168bf87>] __up_console_sem+0x77/0xb0
    hardirqs last disabled at (584345): [<ffffffff8168bf6c>] __up_console_sem+0x5c/0xb0
    softirqs last  enabled at (583242): [<ffffffff833ee96d>] netlink_insert+0x14d/0x470
    softirqs last disabled at (583754): [<ffffffff8317c8cd>] netif_napi_add_weight_locked+0x77d/0xba0

on kernel built with MAX_SKB_FRAGS=45, where SKB_WITH_OVERHEAD(1024)
is smaller than GRO_MAX_HEAD.

Such built additionally contains the revert of the single page frag cache
so that napi_get_frags() ends up using the page frag allocator, triggering
the splat.

Note that the underlying issue is independent from the mentioned
revert; address it ensuring that the small head cache will fit either TCP
and GRO allocation and updating napi_alloc_skb() and __netdev_alloc_skb()
to select kmalloc() usage for any allocation fitting such cache.

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-21868 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 6.4 with commit 3948b05950fdd64002a5f182c65ba5cf2d53cf71 and fixed in 6.12.17 with commit ed0ca7d2127c63991cfaf1932b827e3f4f8ee480
	Issue introduced in 6.4 with commit 3948b05950fdd64002a5f182c65ba5cf2d53cf71 and fixed in 6.13.5 with commit 648e440c98e260dec835e48a5d7a9993477b1f9d
	Issue introduced in 6.4 with commit 3948b05950fdd64002a5f182c65ba5cf2d53cf71 and fixed in 6.14 with commit 14ad6ed30a10afbe91b0749d6378285f4225d482

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2025-21868
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	include/net/gro.h
	net/core/gro.c
	net/core/skbuff.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ed0ca7d2127c63991cfaf1932b827e3f4f8ee480
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/648e440c98e260dec835e48a5d7a9993477b1f9d
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/14ad6ed30a10afbe91b0749d6378285f4225d482