CVE-2024-57940: exfat: fix the infinite loop in exfat_readdir()

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: 2025-01-21 · updated 2026-10-15
Weakness: CWE-835

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: exfat: fix the infinite loop in exfat_readdir() If the file system is corrupted so that a cluster is linked to itself in the cluster chain, and there is an unused directory entry in the cluster, 'dentry' will not be incremented, causing condition 'dentry < max_dentries' unable to prevent an infinite loop. This infinite loop causes s_lock not to be released, and other tasks will hang, such as exfat_sync_fs(). This commit stops traversing the cluster chain when there is unused directory entry in the cluster to avoid this infinite loop.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.7 before 6.1.125; from 6.2 before 6.6.72; from 6.7 before 6.12.10; 6.13-rc1, 6.13-rc2, 6.13-rc3, 6.13-rc4, 6.13-rc5, 6.13-rc6 — fixed in 6.1.125, 6.12.10, 6.6.72

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.1.125, 6.12.10, 6.6.72. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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