What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-71292: jfs: nlink overflow in jfs_rename

• 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: 2026-05-06 · updated 2026-10-14

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: jfs: nlink overflow in jfs_rename If nlink is maximal for a directory (-1) and inside that directory you perform a rename for some child directory (not moving from the parent), then the nlink of the first directory is first incremented and later decremented. Normally this is fine, but when nlink = -1 this causes a wrap around to 0, and then drop_nlink issues a warning. After applying the patch syzbot no longer issues any warnings. I also ran some basic fs tests to look for any regressions.

Affected products

• Linux kernel: from 2.6.12.1 before 5.10.252; from 5.11 before 5.15.202; from 5.16 before 6.1.165; from 6.2 before 6.6.128; from 6.7 before 6.12.75; from 6.13 before 6.18.16 — fixed in 5.10.252, 5.15.202, 6.1.165, 6.12.75, 6.18.16, 6.19.6

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.252, 5.15.202, 6.1.165, 6.12.75. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2108829a59f081e822fdab8c2cd7131deb8aa8a1
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/5d77c36cd4b698649f5c30c5f6c084f4f61d1880
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/9218dc26fd922b09858ecd3666ed57dfd8098da8
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/93c325746ae59709b4f9bad4e3e4761c8d566c70
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a3d66089e50a6e0142f8884471f74292102ea9aa
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b4330a0d0947fbdc9d445cbbeabd8cc910a8c9ca
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f70fcbc2ac7c24f087a2c895c5753aa730b1e479
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fe136426e30ca6debcf916fd6a141555ed9fde74

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