CVE-2024-53685: ceph: give up on paths longer than PATH_MAX

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: 2025-01-11 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-835

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ceph: give up on paths longer than PATH_MAX If the full path to be built by ceph_mdsc_build_path() happens to be longer than PATH_MAX, then this function will enter an endless (retry) loop, effectively blocking the whole task. Most of the machine becomes unusable, making this a very simple and effective DoS vulnerability. I cannot imagine why this retry was ever implemented, but it seems rather useless and harmful to me. Let's remove it and fail with ENAMETOOLONG instead.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 2.6.35 before 5.10.234; from 5.11 before 5.15.177; from 5.16 before 6.1.125; from 6.2 before 6.6.70; from 6.7 before 6.12.7; 2.6.34, 2.6.34-rc2, 2.6.34-rc3, 2.6.34-rc4, 2.6.34-rc5, 2.6.34-rc6 (+4) — fixed in 5.10.234, 5.15.177, 6.1.125, 6.12.7, 6.6.70

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.234, 5.15.177, 6.1.125, 6.12.7. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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