CVE-2025-21816 | hrtimers: Force migrate away hrtimers queued after CPUHP_AP_HRTIMERS_DYING

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 CPUHP_AP_HRTIMERS_DYING) reports its completion at the end of its work through cpu_stop_signal_done() and performs a wake up that eventually arms the deadline server timer: WARNING: CPU: 94 PID: 588 at kernel/time/hrtimer.c:1086 hrtimer_start_range_ns+0x289/0x2d0 CPU: 94 UID: 0 PID: 588 Comm: migration/94 Not tainted Stopper: multi_cpu_stop+0x0/0x120 <- stop_machine_cpuslocked+0x66/0xc0 RIP: 0010:hrtimer_start_range_ns+0x289/0x2d0 Call Trace: <TASK> start_dl_timer enqueue_dl_entity dl_server_start enqueue_task_fair enqueue_task ttwu_do_activate try_to_wake_up complete cpu_stopper_thread Instead of providing yet another bandaid to work around the situation, fix it in the hrtimers infrastructure instead: always migrate away a timer to an online target whenever it is enqueued from an offline CPU. This will also allow to revert all the above RCU disgraceful hacks.

Published: 2025-02-27 Last update: 2025-11-03 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2025-21816 is rated Low Risk (25.2/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.03%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2025-21816

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2026-04-07 0.05% 0.03% -0.02%
2 2025-12-24 0.04% 0.05% +0.01%
3 2025-11-21 0.04%

Full EPSS history (7 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2025-21816

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

Base score Version Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Score source
5.5 3.1 MEDIUM
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:N)
Nobody has to click “OK” or open a trap file; it can work without a victim helping.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:N)
Data isn’t meaningfully altered or forged.
Availability (A:H)
Could take the service down hard or make it unusable for people who depend on it.
1.8 3.6 [email protected]

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2025-21816

OS Trackers for CVE-2025-21816

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2025-21816 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 2 source packages (linux, linux-6.1), 6 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5, open 1. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2025-21816
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-21816
suse medium CVE-2025-21816 severity moderate: SUSE including 340 source package names (13.2-6.19:libjitterentropy3-3.4.1-3.1, 13.2-6.19:libopenssl3-3.1.4-6.1, …), 700 product×package rows across 104 product lines (Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/baremetal-os-container, Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/base-os-container, … (104 product lines)): Known Affected 231, Fixed 228, Known Not Affected 220, First Fixed 21. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-21816/
ubuntu medium CVE-2025-21816 medium priority: Ubuntu including 158 source packages (linux, linux-allwinner-5.19, …), 1551 status rows across 10 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, oracular, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 1145, ignored 148, released 136, not-affected 67, needed 55. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2025-21816

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2025-21816

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
linux linux_kernel >= 4.19.302, < 4.20 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.4.264, < 5.5 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.10.204, < 5.11 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 5.15.143, < 5.16 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 6.1.68, < 6.1.141 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 6.6.7, < 6.6.93 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 6.7.1, < 6.12.14 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel >= 6.13, < 6.13.3 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.7 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.7:-:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.7 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.7:rc2:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.7 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.7:rc3:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.7 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.7:rc4:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.7 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.7:rc5:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.7 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.7:rc6:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.7 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.7:rc7:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.7 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.7:rc8:*:*:*:*:*:*
linux linux_kernel 6.14 cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:6.14:rc1:*:*:*:*:*:*

References for CVE-2025-21816

cvelogic Threat Intelligence