Medium · published August 25, 2026
The Zephyr ext2 filesystem driver fails to validate the s_log_block_size field of the on-disk superblock when mounting a filesystem. ext2_verify_disk_superblock() in subsys/fs/ext2/ext2_impl.c checks the magic number, revision, inode size and group counts, but never bounds s_log_block_size. On a successful verify, subsys/fs/ext2/ext2_ops.c computes fs->block_size = 1024 << superblock.s_log_block_size from this attacker-controlled uint32_t, so a crafted value either overflows the shift (undefined behaviour) or yields a block size far larger than CONFIG_EXT2_MAX_BLOCK_SIZE.
That block size is then passed to k_mem_slab_init() by ext2_init_blocks_slab() to carve CONFIG_EXT2_MAX_BLOCK_COUNT blocks out of the fixed static buffer __ext2_block_memory_buffer, whose size is CONFIG_EXT2_MAX_BLOCK_COUNT * CONFIG_EXT2_MAX_BLOCK_SIZE. k_mem_slab_init() does not verify that the requested blocks fit the buffer, and the ext2 wrapper discards its return value, so the slab is laid out past the end of the static buffer. The mount immediately reads block-group, bitmap and inode blocks of fs->block_size bytes each into these slab blocks, producing an out-of-bounds write into adjacent static memory on the first block read.
The entire path is gated only by data read from the mounted image, making this reachable by any attacker who can present a crafted ext2 image to a device that mounts it (for example a removable SD card or storage medium). Because the ext2 driver runs in kernel mode, supplying image bytes yields a supervisor-mode memory-corruption primitive, with impact ranging from denial of service to potential code execution.
The fix rejects s_log_block_size values that overflow the shift (greater than 11) or that produce a block size exceeding CONFIG_EXT2_MAX_BLOCK_SIZE, so the block slab can no longer be initialized larger than its backing buffer.