CVE-2020-25221 Privilege escalation in n/a

What is CVE-2020-25221?

CVE-2020-25221 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 10 Sep 2020. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

get_gate_page in mm/gup.c in the Linux kernel 5.7.x and 5.8.x before 5.8.7 allows privilege escalation because of incorrect reference counting (caused by gate page mishandling) of the struct page that backs the vsyscall page. The result is a refcount underflow. This can be triggered by any 64-bit process that can use ptrace() or process_vm_readv(), aka CID-9fa2dd946743.

Weakness: CWE-672

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-25221?

It affects 6 products.

Products include Linux kernel, Netapp Cloud Backup, Netapp Hci Compute Node, Netapp Solidfire\, Enterprise Sds \& Hci Storage Node, Netapp Solidfire \& Hci Management Node, Netapp Solidfire Baseboard Management Controller.

How do I fix CVE-2020-25221?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2020-25221 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-25221 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2020-25221, GHSA-442r-3r9f-48cm, UBUNTU-CVE-2020-25221.