CVE-2025-21632

CVE Details

Release Date:	2025-01-19
Impact:	Low	What is this?

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: x86/fpu: Ensure shadow stack is active before "getting" registers The x86 shadow stack support has its own set of registers. Those registers are XSAVE-managed, but they are "supervisor state components" which means that userspace can not touch them with XSAVE/XRSTOR. It also means that they are not accessible from the existing ptrace ABI for XSAVE state. Thus, there is a new ptrace get/set interface for it. The regset code that ptrace uses provides an ->active() handler in addition to the get/set ones. For shadow stack this ->active() handler verifies that shadow stack is enabled via the ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK bit in the thread struct. The ->active() handler is checked from some call sites of the regset get/set handlers, but not the ptrace ones. This was not understood when shadow stack support was put in place. As a result, both the set/get handlers can be called with XFEATURE_CET_USER in its init state, which would cause get_xsave_addr() to return NULL and trigger a WARN_ON(). The ssp_set() handler luckily has an ssp_active() check to avoid surprising the kernel with shadow stack behavior when the kernel is not ready for it (ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK==0). That check just happened to avoid the warning. But the ->get() side wasn't so lucky. It can be called with shadow stacks disabled, triggering the warning in practice, as reported by Christina Schimpe: WARNING: CPU: 5 PID: 1773 at arch/x86/kernel/fpu/regset.c:198 ssp_get+0x89/0xa0 [...] Call Trace: ? show_regs+0x6e/0x80 ? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0 ? __warn+0x91/0x150 ? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0 ? report_bug+0x19d/0x1b0 ? handle_bug+0x46/0x80 ? exc_invalid_op+0x1d/0x80 ? asm_exc_invalid_op+0x1f/0x30 ? __pfx_ssp_get+0x10/0x10 ? ssp_get+0x89/0xa0 ? ssp_get+0x52/0xa0 __regset_get+0xad/0xf0 copy_regset_to_user+0x52/0xc0 ptrace_regset+0x119/0x140 ptrace_request+0x13c/0x850 ? wait_task_inactive+0x142/0x1d0 ? do_syscall_64+0x6d/0x90 arch_ptrace+0x102/0x300 [...] Ensure that shadow stacks are active in a thread before looking them up in the XSAVE buffer. Since ARCH_SHSTK_SHSTK and user_ssp[SHSTK_EN] are set at the same time, the active check ensures that there will be something to find in the XSAVE buffer. [ dhansen: changelog/subject tweaks ]

See more information about CVE-2025-21632 from MITRE CVE dictionary and NIST NVD

NOTE: The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 metrics

Base Score:	4.4
Vector String:	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Version:	3.1
Attack Vector:	Local
Attack Complexity:	Low
Privileges Required:	High
User Interaction:	None
Scope:	Unchanged
Confidentiality Impact:	None
Integrity Impact:	None
Availability Impact:	High

Errata information

Platform	Errata	Release Date
Oracle Linux version 10 (kernel-uek)	ELSA-2025-20480	2025-07-17
Oracle Linux version 9 (kernel-uek)	ELSA-2025-20480	2025-07-17