CVE-2024-53690: nilfs2: prevent use of deleted inode

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: 2025-01-11 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: nilfs2: prevent use of deleted inode syzbot reported a WARNING in nilfs_rmdir. [1] Because the inode bitmap is corrupted, an inode with an inode number that should exist as a ".nilfs" file was reassigned by nilfs_mkdir for "file0", causing an inode duplication during execution. And this causes an underflow of i_nlink in rmdir operations. The inode is used twice by the same task to unmount and remove directories ".nilfs" and "file0", it trigger warning in nilfs_rmdir. Avoid to this issue, check i_nlink in nilfs_iget(), if it is 0, it means that this inode has been deleted, and iput is executed to reclaim it. [1] WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 5824 at fs/inode.c:407 drop_nlink+0xc4/0x110 fs/inode.c:407 ... Call Trace: <TASK> nilfs_rmdir+0x1b0/0x250 fs/nilfs2/namei.c:342 vfs_rmdir+0x3a3/0x510 fs/namei.c:4394 do_rmdir+0x3b5/0x580 fs/namei.c:4453 __do_sys_rmdir fs/namei.c:4472 [inline] __se_sys_rmdir fs/namei.c:4470 [inline] __x64_sys_rmdir+0x47/0x50 fs/namei.c:4470 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:52 [inline] do_syscall_64+0xf3/0x230 arch/x86/entry/common.c:83 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 2.6.30 before 5.4.289; from 5.5 before 5.10.233; from 5.11 before 5.15.176; from 5.16 before 6.1.122; from 6.2 before 6.6.68; from 6.7 before 6.12.7 — fixed in 5.10.233, 5.15.176, 5.4.289, 6.1.122, 6.12.7, 6.6.68

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.233, 5.15.176, 5.4.289, 6.1.122. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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