CVE Catalog

CVE-2025-21872

MediumCVSS 5.5
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.21%

11th percentile - higher than 11% of all known CVEs

Summary

A vulnerability was fixed in the Linux kernel's EFI MOKvar table handling, where the entire table was remapped on each loop iteration during validation. For large tables, this caused a mapping failure and traceback due to early_memmap() limitations. The fix maps only each entry header and enforces NUL termination of variable names.

Risk Assessment

The vulnerability can cause a denial of service (kernel panic) during system boot on machines with large MOKvar tables, preventing normal startup. However, it requires specific hardware/firmware configuration conditions.

Recommendation

Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix for CVE-2025-21872. If updating is not possible, monitor boot messages for MOKvar mapping errors and consider limiting the MOKvar table size.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: efi: Don't map the entire mokvar table to determine its size Currently, when validating the mokvar table, we (re)map the entire table on each iteration of the loop, adding space as we discover new entries. If the table grows over a certain size, this fails due to limitations of early_memmap(), and we get a failure and traceback: ------------[ cut here ]------------ WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 0 at mm/early_ioremap.c:139 __early_ioremap+0xef/0x220 ... Call Trace: <TASK> ? __early_ioremap+0xef/0x220 ? __warn.cold+0x93/0xfa ? __early_ioremap+0xef/0x220 ? report_bug+0xff/0x140 ? early_fixup_exception+0x5d/0xb0 ? early_idt_handler_common+0x2f/0x3a ? __early_ioremap+0xef/0x220 ? efi_mokvar_table_init+0xce/0x1d0 ? setup_arch+0x864/0xc10 ? start_kernel+0x6b/0xa10 ? x86_64_start_reservations+0x24/0x30 ? x86_64_start_kernel+0xed/0xf0 ? common_startup_64+0x13e/0x141 </TASK> ---[ end trace 0000000000000000 ]--- mokvar: Failed to map EFI MOKvar config table pa=0x7c4c3000, size=265187. Mapping the entire structure isn't actually necessary, as we don't ever need more than one entry header mapped at once. Changes efi_mokvar_table_init() to only map each entry header, not the entire table, when determining the table size. Since we're not mapping any data past the variable name, it also changes the code to enforce that each variable name is NUL terminated, rather than attempting to verify it in place.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS