CVE-2025-21922

MEDIUM

Linux Kernel 2.6.12-6.13.7 - Use of Uninitialized Resource in PPP Driver

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ppp: Fix KMSAN uninit-value warning with bpf Syzbot caught an "KMSAN: uninit-value" warning [1], which is caused by the ppp driver not initializing a 2-byte header when using socket filter. The following code can generate a PPP filter BPF program: ''' struct bpf_program fp; pcap_t *handle; handle = pcap_open_dead(DLT_PPP_PPPD, 65535); pcap_compile(handle, &fp, "ip and outbound", 0, 0); bpf_dump(&fp, 1); ''' Its output is: ''' (000) ldh [2] (001) jeq #0x21 jt 2 jf 5 (002) ldb [0] (003) jeq #0x1 jt 4 jf 5 (004) ret #65535 (005) ret #0 ''' Wen can find similar code at the following link: https://github.com/ppp-project/ppp/blob/master/pppd/options.c#L1680 The maintainer of this code repository is also the original maintainer of the ppp driver. As you can see the BPF program skips 2 bytes of data and then reads the 'Protocol' field to determine if it's an IP packet. Then it read the first byte of the first 2 bytes to determine the direction. The issue is that only the first byte indicating direction is initialized in current ppp driver code while the second byte is not initialized. For normal BPF programs generated by libpcap, uninitialized data won't be used, so it's not a problem. However, for carefully crafted BPF programs, such as those generated by syzkaller [2], which start reading from offset 0, the uninitialized data will be used and caught by KMSAN. [1] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=853242d9c9917165d791 [2] https://syzkaller.appspot.com/text?tag=ReproC&x=11994913980000

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0017
EPSS Percentile 7.1%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation none
Automatable no
Technical Impact partial

Details

CWE
CWE-908
Status published
Products (27)
linux/Kernel 2.6.12 - 5.4.291linux
linux/Kernel 5.11.0 - 5.15.179linux
linux/Kernel 5.16.0 - 6.1.131linux
linux/Kernel 5.5.0 - 5.10.235linux
linux/Kernel 6.13.0 - 6.13.7linux
linux/Kernel 6.2.0 - 6.6.83linux
linux/Kernel 6.7.0 - 6.12.19linux
Linux/Linux < 2.6.12
Linux/Linux 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 - 1eacd47636a9de5bee25d9d5962dc538a82d9f0b
Linux/Linux 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 - 2f591cb158807bdcf424f66f1fbfa6e4e50f3757
... and 17 more
Published Apr 01, 2025
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026