CVE-2025-21658

btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid extent tree

Medium · published January 21, 2025

CVSS v3.1
5.5
EPSS
0%
Percentile
9.7
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid extent tree

[BUG]

Syzbot reported a crash with the following call trace:

BTRFS info (device loop0): scrub: started on devid 1

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000208

#PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode

#PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page

PGD 106e70067 P4D 106e70067 PUD 107143067 PMD 0

Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI

CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 689 Comm: repro Kdump: loaded Tainted: G O 6.13.0-rc4-custom+ #206

Tainted: [O]=OOT_MODULE

Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS unknown 02/02/2022

RIP: 0010:find_first_extent_item+0x26/0x1f0 [btrfs]

Call Trace:

<TASK>

scrub_find_fill_first_stripe+0x13d/0x3b0 [btrfs]

scrub_simple_mirror+0x175/0x260 [btrfs]

scrub_stripe+0x5d4/0x6c0 [btrfs]

scrub_chunk+0xbb/0x170 [btrfs]

scrub_enumerate_chunks+0x2f4/0x5f0 [btrfs]

btrfs_scrub_dev+0x240/0x600 [btrfs]

btrfs_ioctl+0x1dc8/0x2fa0 [btrfs]

? do_sys_openat2+0xa5/0xf0

__x64_sys_ioctl+0x97/0xc0

do_syscall_64+0x4f/0x120

entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e

</TASK>

[CAUSE]

The reproducer is using a corrupted image where extent tree root is

corrupted, thus forcing to use "rescue=all,ro" mount option to mount the

image.

Then it triggered a scrub, but since scrub relies on extent tree to find

where the data/metadata extents are, scrub_find_fill_first_stripe()

relies on an non-empty extent root.

But unfortunately scrub_find_fill_first_stripe() doesn't really expect

an NULL pointer for extent root, it use extent_root to grab fs_info and

triggered a NULL pointer dereference.

[FIX]

Add an extra check for a valid extent root at the beginning of

scrub_find_fill_first_stripe().

The new error path is introduced by 42437a6386ff ("btrfs: introduce

mount option rescue=ignorebadroots"), but that's pretty old, and later

commit b979547513ff ("btrfs: scrub: introduce helper to find and fill

sector info for a scrub_stripe") changed how we do scrub.

So for kernels older than 6.6, the fix will need manual backport.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
5.5 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00203 · 9.7th percentile
Published
2025-01-21T12:18Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 21 JAN 12:18Z
    btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid extent tree
    cvelistv5