{"cve":"CVE-2025-21910","nvd":{"published":"2025-04-01T16:15:21.550","modified":"2026-06-17T08:44:35.277","status":"Modified","description":"In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:\n\nwifi: cfg80211: regulatory: improve invalid hints checking\n\nSyzbot keeps reporting an issue [1] that occurs when erroneous symbols\nsent from userspace get through into user_alpha2[] via\nregulatory_hint_user() call. Such invalid regulatory hints should be\nrejected.\n\nWhile a sanity check from commit 47caf685a685 (\"cfg80211: regulatory:\nreject invalid hints\") looks to be enough to deter these very cases,\nthere is a way to get around it due to 2 reasons.\n\n1) The way isalpha() works, symbols other than latin lower and\nupper letters may be used to determine a country/domain.\nFor instance, greek letters will also be considered upper/lower\nletters and for such characters isalpha() will return true as well.\nHowever, ISO-3166-1 alpha2 codes should only hold latin\ncharacters.\n\n2) While processing a user regulatory request, between\nreg_process_hint_user() and regulatory_hint_user() there happens to\nbe a call to queue_regulatory_request() which modifies letters in\nrequest->alpha2[] with toupper(). This works fine for latin symbols,\nless so for weird letter characters from the second part of _ctype[].\n\nSyzbot triggers a warning in is_user_regdom_saved() by first sending\nover an unexpected non-latin letter that gets malformed by toupper()\ninto a character that ends up failing isalpha() check.\n\nPrevent this by enhancing is_an_alpha2() to ensure that incoming\nsymbols are latin letters and nothing else.\n\n[1] Syzbot report:\n------------[ cut here ]------------\nUnexpected user alpha2: A�\nWARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 964 at net/wireless/reg.c:442 is_user_regdom_saved net/wireless/reg.c:440 [inline]\nWARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 964 at net/wireless/reg.c:442 restore_alpha2 net/wireless/reg.c:3424 [inline]\nWARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 964 at net/wireless/reg.c:442 restore_regulatory_settings+0x3c0/0x1e50 net/wireless/reg.c:3516\nModules linked in:\nCPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 964 Comm: kworker/1:2 Not tainted 6.12.0-rc5-syzkaller-00044-gc1e939a21eb1 #0\nHardware name: Google Google Compute Engine/Google Compute Engine, BIOS Google 09/13/2024\nWorkqueue: events_power_efficient crda_timeout_work\nRIP: 0010:is_user_regdom_saved net/wireless/reg.c:440 [inline]\nRIP: 0010:restore_alpha2 net/wireless/reg.c:3424 [inline]\nRIP: 0010:restore_regulatory_settings+0x3c0/0x1e50 net/wireless/reg.c:3516\n...\nCall Trace:\n <TASK>\n crda_timeout_work+0x27/0x50 net/wireless/reg.c:542\n process_one_work kernel/workqueue.c:3229 [inline]\n process_scheduled_works+0xa65/0x1850 kernel/workqueue.c:3310\n worker_thread+0x870/0xd30 kernel/workqueue.c:3391\n kthread+0x2f2/0x390 kernel/kthread.c:389\n ret_from_fork+0x4d/0x80 arch/x86/kernel/process.c:147\n ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:244\n </TASK>","cvss_v4":null,"cvss_v3":{"version":"3.1","vector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H","score":5.5},"cwes":[],"references":["https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/17aa34c84867f6cd181a5743e1c647e7766962a6","https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/35ef07112b61b06eb30683a6563c9f6378c02476","https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/59b348be7597c4a9903cb003c69e37df20c04a30","https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/62b1a9bbfebba4b4c2bb6c1ede9ef7ecee7a9ff6","https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6a5e3b23054cee3b92683d1467e3fa83921f5622"],"products":["linux:linux_kernel"],"source":"nvd","synced_at":"2026-10-19T22:00:57.946988208+00:00"},"epss":{"cve":"CVE-2025-21910","score":0.0023,"percentile":0.13941,"date":"2026-10-31"},"kev":null,"osv":[],"attribution":["This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.","EPSS scores: FIRST Exploit Prediction Scoring System, https://www.first.org/epss","Known exploited vulnerabilities: CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog, https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog","Package advisories: OSV (https://osv.dev), from the GitHub Advisory Database, PyPA, Go, RustSec and other ecosystem databases, under CC-BY 4.0 or CC0","CVE records: the CVE Program's CVE List (https://www.cve.org), under its terms of use (https://www.cve.org/Legal/TermsOfUse). CVE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation; this product is not affiliated with the CVE Program."]}