CVE-2026-64567

7.8 HIGH

Published 2026-08-05 · Updated 2026-08-08

AI risk analysis

Summary: This flaw allows an attacker to manipulate a btrfs free space cache header to cause out-of-bounds memory access during loading, potentially leading to kernel crashes or privilege escalation.
Exploitability: Exploitation requires control over the filesystem and knowledge of the exact header manipulation needed. It is moderately difficult due to the need for precise header tampering.
Blast radius: If exploited, this could lead to severe system instability or unauthorized access to the kernel, affecting the entire system.
Prioritized remediation: Update to a patched version of the Linux kernel as soon as possible.

kernelbtrfsmemory-overflowpatch-available

Analysis generated locally by qwen2.5:7b-instruct (no data left the box). AI-assisted — verify against primary sources before acting.

NVD description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: btrfs: reject free space cache with more entries than pages When loading a v1 free space cache, __load_free_space_cache() takes num_entries and num_bitmaps straight from the on-disk btrfs_free_space_header. That header is stored in the tree_root under a key with type 0, which the tree-checker has no case for, so neither count is validated before the load trusts it. The load loops num_entries times and maps the next page whenever the current one runs out, going through io_ctl_check_crc() -> io_ctl_map_page(), which does io_ctl->pages[io_ctl->index++]. But pages[] is allocated in io_ctl_init() from the cache inode's i_size, not from num_entries: num_pages = DIV_ROUND_UP(i_size_read(inode), PAGE_SIZE); io_ctl->pages = kcalloc(num_pages, sizeof(struct page *), GFP_NOFS); So if num_entries claims more records than the pages can hold, io_ctl->index runs off the end of pages[]. The write side never hits this because io_ctl_add_entry() and io_ctl_add_bitmap() both stop once io_ctl->index >= io_ctl->num_pages; the read side just never had the same check. To trigger it, take a clean cache (num_entries = <N> here), set num_entries in the header to 0x10000, and fix up the leaf checksum so it still passes the tree-checker. The cache inode has i_size = 65536, so num_pages is 16 and pages[] is a 16-pointer (kmalloc-128) array. The load now tries to read 65536 entries, io_ctl->index walks up to 16, and pages[16] is read past the array: BUG: KASAN: slab-out-of-bounds in io_ctl_check_crc (fs/btrfs/free-space-cache.c:420 fs/btrfs/free-space-cache.c:565) Read of size 8 at addr ffff88800c833a80 by task kworker/u8:3/58 io_ctl_check_crc (fs/btrfs/free-space-cache.c:420 fs/btrfs/free-space-cache.c:565) __load_free_space_cache (fs/btrfs/free-space-cache.c:655 fs/btrfs/free-space-cache.c:820) load_free_space_cache (fs/btrfs/free-space-cache.c:1017) caching_thread (fs/btrfs/block-group.c:880) btrfs_work_helper (fs/btrfs/async-thread.c:312) process_one_work worker_thread kthread ret_from_fork free-space-cache.c:420 is io_ctl_map_page(), inlined into io_ctl_check_crc() at line 565, which is why that is the frame KASAN names. The out-of-bounds slot is then treated as a struct page and handed to crc32c(), so the bad read turns into a GP fault. Add the missing check to io_ctl_check_crc(), which is where both the entry loop and the bitmap loop end up. When num_entries is too large the load now fails like any corrupt cache: __load_free_space_cache() drops it and rebuilds the free space from the extent tree, so a valid cache is never rejected.

CVSS vector

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

All references

Source data: NVD (nvd.nist.gov), public domain. Exploit-DB.ai adds local AI analysis for defensive use only.