CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2025-21908 — Linux Linux Kernel security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.5

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: NFS: fix nfs_release_folio() to not deadlock via kcompactd writeback Add PF_KCOMPACTD flag and current_is_kcompactd() helper to check for it so nfs_release_folio() can skip calling nfs_wb_folio() from kcompactd. Otherwise NFS can deadlock waiting for kcompactd enduced writeback which recurses back to NFS (which triggers writeback to NFSD via NFS loopback mount on the same host, NFSD blocks waiting for XFS's call to __filemap_get_folio): 6070.550357] INFO: task kcompactd0:58 blocked for more than 4435 seconds. {--- [58] "kcompactd0" [<0>] folio_wait_bit+0xe8/0x200 [<0>] folio_wait_writeback+0x2b/0x80 [<0>] nfs_wb_folio+0x80/0x1b0 [nfs] [<0>] nfs_release_folio+0x68/0x130 [nfs] [<0>] split_huge_page_to_list_to_order+0x362/0x840 [<0>] migrate_pages_batch+0x43d/0xb90 [<0>] migrate_pages_sync+0x9a/0x240 [<0>] migrate_pages+0x93c/0x9f0 [<0>] compact_zone+0x8e2/0x1030 [<0>] compact_node+0xdb/0x120 [<0>] kcompactd+0x121/0x2e0 [<0>] kthread+0xcf/0x100 [<0>] ret_from_fork+0x31/0x40 [<0>] ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 ---} [akpm@linux-foundation.org: fix build]

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.5 (3.1)
Published
2025-04-01
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
linux/kernel
Weaknesses
CWE-667

Affected products

  • linux / linux_kernel
  • linux / linux_kernel / 6.14

Showing 2 representative product identities from 8 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Race condition, TOCTOU, and lifecycle synchronization

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Map concurrent actors, shared state, lock boundaries, signals, callbacks, retries, and check-then-use sequences in the affected path.
  • Determine whether untrusted users can influence timing, object names, filesystem state, or repeated state transitions.
  • Identify clustered and multi-process behavior that repository-local tests may not represent.

Remediate safely

  • Make the sensitive state transition atomic or protect it with a consistently ordered synchronization primitive.
  • Perform authorization and invariant checks on the same authoritative object and transaction used for the operation.
  • Use unique private resources, safe ownership transfer, and idempotent operations; add deterministic concurrency regression tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.