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

> A Linux kernel bug causes hrtimers to be ignored on offline CPUs, potentially leading to system instability or denial of service.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Any signed-in user
- **Attackable:** Local or same network only
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 27 Feb 2025
- **Updated:** 23 May 2026
- **Also known as:** AZL-68823, BELL-CVE-2025-21816, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-21816, GHSA-rp2m-6293-6r8v, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2025-21816, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2025-21816, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2025-21816, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-21816, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-21816

## What is CVE-2025-21816?

CVE-2025-21816 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 27 Feb 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

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.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-21816?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2025-21816?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2025-21816 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-21816 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

- [CVE-2026-53266](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53266/): Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-6282](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-6282/): Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2022-0185](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-0185/): Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-2094](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-2094/): Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-53362](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53362/): Linux Kernel Unspecified (high 7.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2025-21816 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2025-21816 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 27 Feb 2025. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-21816 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux kernel. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-21816/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-21816/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-21816
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-21816
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2025-21816

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-21816/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.