vulnerability
VMware Photon OS: CVE-2025-21920
| Severity | CVSS | Published | Added | Modified |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | (AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:N/A:C) | Apr 1, 2025 | Oct 13, 2025 | Oct 13, 2025 |
Severity
6
CVSS
(AV:L/AC:L/Au:S/C:C/I:N/A:C)
Published
Apr 1, 2025
Added
Oct 13, 2025
Modified
Oct 13, 2025
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
vlan: enforce underlying device type
Currently, VLAN devices can be created on top of non-ethernet devices.
Besides the fact that it doesn't make much sense, this also causes a
bug which leaks the address of a kernel function to usermode.
When creating a VLAN device, we initialize GARP (garp_init_applicant)
and MRP (mrp_init_applicant) for the underlying device.
As part of the initialization process, we add the multicast address of
each applicant to the underlying device, by calling dev_mc_add.
__dev_mc_add uses dev->addr_len to determine the length of the new
multicast address.
This causes an out-of-bounds read if dev->addr_len is greater than 6,
since the multicast addresses provided by GARP and MRP are only 6
bytes long.
This behaviour can be reproduced using the following commands:
ip tunnel add gretest mode ip6gre local ::1 remote ::2 dev lo
ip l set up dev gretest
ip link add link gretest name vlantest type vlan id 100
Then, the following command will display the address of garp_pdu_rcv:
ip maddr show | grep 01:80:c2:00:00:21
Fix the bug by enforcing the type of the underlying device during VLAN
device initialization.
vlan: enforce underlying device type
Currently, VLAN devices can be created on top of non-ethernet devices.
Besides the fact that it doesn't make much sense, this also causes a
bug which leaks the address of a kernel function to usermode.
When creating a VLAN device, we initialize GARP (garp_init_applicant)
and MRP (mrp_init_applicant) for the underlying device.
As part of the initialization process, we add the multicast address of
each applicant to the underlying device, by calling dev_mc_add.
__dev_mc_add uses dev->addr_len to determine the length of the new
multicast address.
This causes an out-of-bounds read if dev->addr_len is greater than 6,
since the multicast addresses provided by GARP and MRP are only 6
bytes long.
This behaviour can be reproduced using the following commands:
ip tunnel add gretest mode ip6gre local ::1 remote ::2 dev lo
ip l set up dev gretest
ip link add link gretest name vlantest type vlan id 100
Then, the following command will display the address of garp_pdu_rcv:
ip maddr show | grep 01:80:c2:00:00:21
Fix the bug by enforcing the type of the underlying device during VLAN
device initialization.
Solution
vmware-photon_os_update_tdnf
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