High · published September 12, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
nilfs2: fix slab-out-of-bounds in nilfs_direct_propagate after truncation
Shuangpeng Bai reported that KASAN detected a slab-out-of-bounds error
in nilfs_direct_propagate() during testing.
Analysis revealed that after truncating a file, a node block immediately
below the B-tree root was not deleted. Instead, it remained in the B-tree
node cache in a dirty state. The log writer subsequently detected this
block and incorrectly invoked nilfs_direct_propagate() on it, which is
designed to handle only data blocks in direct mapping.
B-tree nodes in the cache are managed by virtual block numbers, and their
logical keys typically exceed the range expected by direct mapping.
Consequently, processing such a node as a direct mapping entry triggers
a slab-out-of-bounds access.
The root cause is that when a B-tree mapping collapses into a direct
mapping during truncation, an intermediate node block pointed to by the
root node is left behind as garbage instead of being explicitly deleted.
This resolves the issue by adding a nilfs_btree_discard() operation
to delete the remaining intermediate node block during the conversion.
A 'deform' flag is added to the bop_delete interface to explicitly signal
that the deletion is part of a mapping transformation. This allows the
B-tree mapping implementation to perform the necessary cleanup and
discarding of the residual node structure that would be otherwise be left
orphaned after the transition.