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CVE-2022-50485: ext4: add EXT4_IGET_BAD flag to prevent unexpected bad inode

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2025-10-04 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: add EXT4_IGET_BAD flag to prevent unexpected bad inode There are many places that will get unhappy (and crash) when ext4_iget() returns a bad inode. However, if iget the boot loader inode, allows a bad inode to be returned, because the inode may not be initialized. This mechanism can be used to bypass some checks and cause panic. To solve this problem, we add a special iget flag EXT4_IGET_BAD. Only with this flag we'd be returning bad inode from ext4_iget(), otherwise we always return the error code if the inode is bad inode.(suggested by Jan Kara)

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 3.10 before 5.4.229; from 5.5 before 5.10.163; from 5.11 before 5.15.87; from 5.16 before 6.0.18; from 6.1 before 6.1.4 — fixed in 5.10.163, 5.15.87, 5.4.229, 6.0.18, 6.1.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.163, 5.15.87, 5.4.229, 6.0.18. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2142dfa1de61e25b83198af0308ec7689cca25d3
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/488a5c2bf7543c3cd3f07a025f2e62be91599430
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/63b1e9bccb71fe7d7e3ddc9877dbdc85e5d2d023
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c0a738875c2e9c8c3366d792f8bf7fe508d5e5a5
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f725b290ed79ad61e4f721fee95a287892d8b1ad
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f7e6b5548f915d7aa435d0764d41eacfb49c6e09

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