CVE-2025-21788: net: ethernet: ti: am65-cpsw: fix memleak in certain XDP cases

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-02-27 · updated 2026-07-30
Weakness: CWE-401

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: net: ethernet: ti: am65-cpsw: fix memleak in certain XDP cases If the XDP program doesn't result in XDP_PASS then we leak the memory allocated by am65_cpsw_build_skb(). It is pointless to allocate SKB memory before running the XDP program as we would be wasting CPU cycles for cases other than XDP_PASS. Move the SKB allocation after evaluating the XDP program result. This fixes the memleak. A performance boost is seen for XDP_DROP test. XDP_DROP test: Before: 460256 rx/s 0 err/s After: 784130 rx/s 0 err/s

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.10 before 6.12.16; from 6.13 before 6.13.4; 6.14-rc1, 6.14-rc2 — fixed in 6.12.16, 6.13.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.12.16, 6.13.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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