What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2022-49343: ext4: avoid cycles in directory h-tree

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2025-02-26 · updated 2026-08-04

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: avoid cycles in directory h-tree A maliciously corrupted filesystem can contain cycles in the h-tree stored inside a directory. That can easily lead to the kernel corrupting tree nodes that were already verified under its hands while doing a node split and consequently accessing unallocated memory. Fix the problem by verifying traversed block numbers are unique.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: before 4.14.283; from 4.15 before 4.19.247; from 4.20 before 5.4.198; from 5.5 before 5.10.121; from 5.11 before 5.15.46; from 5.16 before 5.17.14 — fixed in 4.14.283, 4.19.247, 5.10.121, 5.15.46, 5.17.14, 5.18.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 4.14.283, 4.19.247, 5.10.121, 5.15.46. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/24b8206fec1db21d7e82f21f0b2ff5e5672cf5b3
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3a3ce941645407cd0b0b7f01ad9e2ea3770f46cc
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3ba733f879c2a88910744647e41edeefbc0d92b2
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6084240bfc44bf265ab6ae7d96980469b05be0f1
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b3ad9ff6f06c1dc6abf7437691c88ca3d6da3ac0
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d5a16a6df2c16eaf4de04948553ef0089dee463f
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e157c8f87e8fac112d6c955e69a60cdb9bc80a60
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ff4cafa51762da3824881a9000ca421d4b78b138

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