Linux Kernel Networking Vulnerability Affecting Device Management

CVE-2025-40170

What is CVE-2025-40170?

This vulnerability in the Linux kernel relates to improper handling of device references within networking functions. Specifically, it addresses issues in how the kernel manages device access when setting up capabilities and calculating maximum sizes for Generic Segmentation Offload (GSO). The fix ensures that these accesses leverage Read-Copy-Update (RCU) for safer concurrent processing, ultimately improving the stability and security of network communication. Several functions, including ip6_dst_mtu_maybe_forward() and ip_dst_mtu_maybe_forward(), have been updated to ensure compatibility and performance resilience.

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