CVE-2025-38059

btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid csum tree

published June 18, 2025

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
8.5
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 csum tree

[BUG]

When trying read-only scrub on a btrfs with rescue=idatacsums mount

option, it will crash with the following call trace:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000208

#PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode

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

CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 835 Comm: btrfs Tainted: G O 6.15.0-rc3-custom+ #236 PREEMPT(full)

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

RIP: 0010:btrfs_lookup_csums_bitmap+0x49/0x480 [btrfs]

Call Trace:

<TASK>

scrub_find_fill_first_stripe+0x35b/0x3d0 [btrfs]

scrub_simple_mirror+0x175/0x290 [btrfs]

scrub_stripe+0x5f7/0x6f0 [btrfs]

scrub_chunk+0x9a/0x150 [btrfs]

scrub_enumerate_chunks+0x333/0x660 [btrfs]

btrfs_scrub_dev+0x23e/0x600 [btrfs]

btrfs_ioctl+0x1dcf/0x2f80 [btrfs]

__x64_sys_ioctl+0x97/0xc0

do_syscall_64+0x4f/0x120

entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e

[CAUSE]

Mount option "rescue=idatacsums" will completely skip loading the csum

tree, so that any data read will not find any data csum thus we will

ignore data checksum verification.

Normally call sites utilizing csum tree will check the fs state flag

NO_DATA_CSUMS bit, but unfortunately scrub does not check that bit at all.

This results in scrub to call btrfs_search_slot() on a NULL pointer

and triggered above crash.

[FIX]

Check both extent and csum tree root before doing any tree search.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00193 · 8.5th percentile
Published
2025-06-18T09:33Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 18 JUN 09:33Z
    btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid csum tree
    cvelistv5