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Medium · 5.5 CVE-2025-21737 EUVD-2025-5185GHSA-755w-2h7x-xvj6

ceph: fix memory leak in ceph_mds_auth_match()

Published Feb 27, 2025 · Updated May 11, 2026 · Assigned by Linux

Vendor: Linux Product: Linux Package: linux Package: linux-allwinner-5.19 Package: linux-aws-5.0 Package: linux-aws-5.11 Package: linux-aws-5.13 Package: linux-aws-5.19 Package: linux-aws-5.3 Package: linux-aws-5.8 Package: linux-aws-6.2 Package: linux-aws-6.5 Package: linux-azure Package: linux-azure-5.11 Package: linux-azure-5.13 Package: linux-azure-5.19 Package: linux-azure-5.3 Package: linux-azure-5.8 Package: linux-azure-6.11 Package: linux-azure-6.2 Package: linux-azure-6.5 Package: linux-azure-edge Package: linux-azure-fde Package: linux-azure-fde-5.19 Package: linux-azure-fde-6.2 Package: linux-gcp Package: linux-gcp-5.11 Package: linux-gcp-5.13 Package: linux-gcp-5.19 Package: linux-gcp-5.3 Package: linux-gcp-5.8 Package: linux-gcp-6.11 Package: linux-gcp-6.2 Package: linux-gcp-6.5 Package: linux-gke Package: linux-gke-4.15 Package: linux-gke-5.15 Package: linux-gke-5.4 Package: linux-gkeop Package: linux-gkeop-5.15 Package: linux-gkeop-5.4 Package: linux-hwe Package: linux-hwe-5.11 Package: linux-hwe-5.13 Package: linux-hwe-5.19 Package: linux-hwe-5.8 Package: linux-hwe-6.11 Package: linux-hwe-6.2 Package: linux-hwe-6.5 Package: linux-hwe-edge Package: linux-intel-5.13 Package: linux-intel-iot-realtime Package: linux-lowlatency-hwe-5.19 Package: linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.11 Package: linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.2 Package: linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.5 Package: linux-nvidia-6.11 Package: linux-nvidia-6.2 Package: linux-nvidia-6.5 Package: linux-oem Package: linux-oem-5.10 Package: linux-oem-5.13 Package: linux-oem-5.14 Package: linux-oem-5.17 Package: linux-oem-5.6 Package: linux-oem-6.0 Package: linux-oem-6.1 Package: linux-oem-6.11 Package: linux-oem-6.5 Package: linux-oracle-5.0 Package: linux-oracle-5.11 Package: linux-oracle-5.13 Package: linux-oracle-5.3 Package: linux-oracle-5.8 Package: linux-oracle-6.5 Package: linux-raspi-realtime Package: linux-raspi2 Package: linux-realtime Package: linux-riscv Package: linux-riscv-5.11 Package: linux-riscv-5.19 Package: linux-riscv-5.8 Package: linux-riscv-6.5 Package: linux-starfive-5.19 Package: linux-starfive-6.2 Package: linux-starfive-6.5 Platform: Linux Ecosystem: Debian Ecosystem: Ubuntu

Description

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

ceph: fix memory leak in ceph_mds_auth_match()

We now free the temporary target path substring allocation on every
possible branch, instead of omitting the default branch. In some
cases, a memory leak occured, which could rapidly crash the system
(depending on how many file accesses were attempted).

This was detected in production because it caused a continuous memory
growth, eventually triggering kernel OOM and completely hard-locking
the kernel.

Relevant kmemleak stacktrace:

unreferenced object 0xffff888131e69900 (size 128):
comm "git", pid 66104, jiffies 4295435999
hex dump (first 32 bytes):
76 6f 6c 75 6d 65 73 2f 63 6f 6e 74 61 69 6e 65 volumes/containe
72 73 2f 67 69 74 65 61 2f 67 69 74 65 61 2f 67 rs/gitea/gitea/g
backtrace (crc 2f3bb450):
[<ffffffffaa68fb49>] __kmalloc_noprof+0x359/0x510
[<ffffffffc32bf1df>] ceph_mds_check_access+0x5bf/0x14e0 [ceph]
[<ffffffffc3235722>] ceph_open+0x312/0xd80 [ceph]
[<ffffffffaa7dd786>] do_dentry_open+0x456/0x1120
[<ffffffffaa7e3729>] vfs_open+0x79/0x360
[<ffffffffaa832875>] path_openat+0x1de5/0x4390
[<ffffffffaa834fcc>] do_filp_open+0x19c/0x3c0
[<ffffffffaa7e44a1>] do_sys_openat2+0x141/0x180
[<ffffffffaa7e4945>] __x64_sys_open+0xe5/0x1a0
[<ffffffffac2cc2f7>] do_syscall_64+0xb7/0x210
[<ffffffffac400130>] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f

It can be triggered by mouting a subdirectory of a CephFS filesystem,
and then trying to access files on this subdirectory with an auth token
using a path-scoped capability:

$ ceph auth get client.services
[client.services]
key = REDACTED
caps mds = "allow rw fsname=cephfs path=/volumes/"
caps mon = "allow r fsname=cephfs"
caps osd = "allow rw tag cephfs data=cephfs"

$ cat /proc/self/mounts
services@[REDACTED].cephfs=/volumes/containers /ceph/containers ceph rw,noatime,name=services,secret=<hidden>,ms_mode=prefer-crc,mount_timeout=300,acl,mon_addr=[REDACTED]:3300,recover_session=clean 0 0

$ seq 1 1000000 | xargs -P32 --replace={} touch /ceph/containers/file-{} && \
seq 1 1000000 | xargs -P32 --replace={} cat /ceph/containers/file-{}

[ idryomov: combine if statements, rename rc to path_matched and make
it a bool, formatting ]

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
Linux Linux 6.10 6.12.14

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 linux 6.12.15-1 —
Debian 13 linux 6.12.15-1 —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS linux-gcp-6.11 +1 6.11.0-1015.15~24.04.1 USN-7521-1
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS linux-hwe-6.11 6.11.0-26.26~24.04.1 USN-7521-1
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS linux-lowlatency-hwe-6.11 6.11.0-1014.15~24.04.1 USN-7521-3
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS linux-nvidia-6.11 6.11.0-1010.10 —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS linux-oem-6.11 6.11.0-1022.22 USN-7521-1
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS linux-raspi-realtime No fix yet —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS linux-riscv +32 No fix yet —
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS linux-gke +28 No fix yet —
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS linux-gcp +14 No fix yet —
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS linux-hwe-edge No fix yet —

Oracle Linux

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Oracle Linux 9 kernel-uek +34 6.12.0-101.33.4.3.el10uek ELSA-2025-20530, ELSA-2025-20480

Advisories 5

References