CVE-2025-40287: exfat: fix improper check of dentry.stream.valid_size

Severity: unknown
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: 2025-12-06 · updated 2026-10-15

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: exfat: fix improper check of dentry.stream.valid_size We found an infinite loop bug in the exFAT file system that can lead to a Denial-of-Service (DoS) condition. When a dentry in an exFAT filesystem is malformed, the following system calls — SYS_openat, SYS_ftruncate, and SYS_pwrite64 — can cause the kernel to hang. Root cause analysis shows that the size validation code in exfat_find() does not check whether dentry.stream.valid_size is negative. As a result, the system calls mentioned above can succeed and eventually trigger the DoS issue. This patch adds a check for negative dentry.stream.valid_size to prevent this vulnerability.

Affected products

Linux kernel: 6.8 — fixed in 6.18

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.18. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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