What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2023-5368: msdosfs data disclosure

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2023-10-04 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-1188

Description

On an msdosfs filesystem, the 'truncate' or 'ftruncate' system calls under certain circumstances populate the additional space in the file with unallocated data from the underlying disk device, rather than zero bytes. This may permit a user with write access to files on a msdosfs filesystem to read unintended data (e.g. from a previously deleted file).

Affected products

• FreeBSD: before 12.4; from 13.0 before 13.2; 12.4, 12.4-p1, 12.4-p2, 12.4-p3, 12.4-p4, 12.4-p5 (+4) — fixed in 12.4, 13.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: FreeBSD 12.4, 13.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://dfir.ru/2023/11/01/bringing-unallocated-data-back-the-fat12-16-32-case/
• https://security.FreeBSD.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-23:12.msdosfs.asc
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20231124-0004/
• https://dfir.ru/2023/11/01/bringing-unallocated-data-back-the-fat12-16-32-case/
• https://security.FreeBSD.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-23:12.msdosfs.asc
• https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20231124-0004/

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