CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-21816 — Linux Linux Kernel security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.5

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: hrtimers: Force migrate away hrtimers queued after CPUHP_AP_HRTIMERS_DYING hrtimers are migrated away from the dying CPU to any online target at the CPUHP_AP_HRTIMERS_DYING stage in order not to delay bandwidth timers handling tasks involved in the CPU hotplug forward progress. However wakeups can still be performed by the outgoing CPU after CPUHP_AP_HRTIMERS_DYING. Those can result again in bandwidth timers being armed. Depending on several considerations (crystal ball power management based election, earliest timer already enqueued, timer migration enabled or not), the target may eventually be the current CPU even if offline. If that happens, the timer is eventually ignored. The most notable example is RCU which had to deal with each and every of those wake-ups by deferring them to an online CPU, along with related workarounds: _ e787644caf76 (rcu: Defer RCU kthreads wakeup when CPU is dying) _ 9139f93209d1 (rcu/nocb: Fix RT throttling hrtimer armed from offline CPU) _ f7345ccc62a4 (rcu/nocb: Fix rcuog wake-up from offline softirq) The problem isn't confined to RCU though as the stop machine kthread (which runs…

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.5 (3.1)
Published
2025-02-27
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
linux/kernel

Affected products

  • linux / linux_kernel
  • linux / linux_kernel / 6.7

Showing 2 representative product identities from 17 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

General vulnerability remediation

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Check exposure

  • Confirm the affected component, deployment paths, reachable interfaces, and enabled features from inventories and configuration, without probing production destructively.
  • Compare the advisory's affected conditions with the repository lockfiles, build manifests, artifacts, and runtime inventory.
  • Identify data sensitivity, trust boundaries, and privilege level for every confirmed affected deployment.

Remediate safely

  • Apply a vendor-supported fix or remove the affected component or feature; record the selected change and its source in the repository.
  • Update direct and transitive dependency locks, generated artifacts, deployment manifests, and asset inventories together.
  • Add a regression test for the documented unsafe condition using inert inputs and preserve rollback instructions.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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