CVE-2025-21658: btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid extent tree

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 2026-10-30
Weakness: CWE-476

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid extent tree [BUG] Syzbot reported a crash with the following call trace: BTRFS info (device loop0): scrub: started on devid 1 BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000208 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 106e70067 P4D 106e70067 PUD 107143067 PMD 0 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 689 Comm: repro Kdump: loaded Tainted: G O 6.13.0-rc4-custom+ #206 Tainted: [O]=OOT_MODULE Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS unknown 02/02/2022 RIP: 0010:find_first_extent_item+0x26/0x1f0 [btrfs] Call Trace: <TASK> scrub_find_fill_first_stripe+0x13d/0x3b0 [btrfs] scrub_simple_mirror+0x175/0x260 [btrfs] scrub_stripe+0x5d4/0x6c0 [btrfs] scrub_chunk+0xbb/0x170 [btrfs] scrub_enumerate_chunks+0x2f4/0x5f0 [btrfs] btrfs_scrub_dev+0x240/0x600 [btrfs] btrfs_ioctl+0x1dc8/0x2fa0 [btrfs] ? do_sys_openat2+0xa5/0xf0 __x64_sys_ioctl+0x97/0xc0 do_syscall_64+0x4f/0x120 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e </TASK> [CAUSE] The reproducer is using a corrupted image where extent tree root is corrupted, thus forcing to use "rescue=all,ro" mount option to mount the image. Then it triggered a scrub, but since scrub relies on extent tree to find where the data/metadata extents are, scrub_find_fill_first_stripe() relies on an non-empty extent root. But unfortunately scrub_find_fill_first_stripe() doesn't really expect an NULL pointer for extent root, it use extent_root to grab fs_info and triggered a NULL pointer dereference. [FIX] Add an extra check for a valid extent root at the beginning of scrub_find_fill_first_stripe(). The new error path is introduced by 42437a6386ff ("btrfs: introduce mount option rescue=ignorebadroots"), but that's pretty old, and later commit b979547513ff ("btrfs: scrub: introduce helper to find and fill sector info for a scrub_stripe") changed how we do scrub. So for kernels older than 6.6, the fix will need manual backport.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.11 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 6.6.72, 6.12.10
Linux: 5.11 — fixed in 6.13

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.6.72, 6.12.10; Linux 6.13. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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