CVE-2026-31716: fs/ntfs3: validate rec->used in journal-replay file record check

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-05-01 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-787

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fs/ntfs3: validate rec->used in journal-replay file record check check_file_record() validates rec->total against the record size but never validates rec->used. The do_action() journal-replay handlers read rec->used from disk and use it to compute memmove lengths: DeleteAttribute: memmove(attr, ..., used - asize - roff) CreateAttribute: memmove(..., attr, used - roff) change_attr_size: memmove(..., used - PtrOffset(rec, next)) When rec->used is smaller than the offset of a validated attribute, or larger than the record size, these subtractions can underflow allowing us to copy huge amounts of memory in to a 4kb buffer, generally considered a bad idea overall. This requires a corrupted filesystem, which isn't a threat model the kernel really needs to worry about, but checking for such an obvious out-of-bounds value is good to keep things robust, especially on journal replay Fix this up by bounding rec->used correctly. This is much like commit b2bc7c44ed17 ("fs/ntfs3: Fix slab-out-of-bounds read in DeleteIndexEntryRoot") which checked different values in this same switch statement.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.15 before 6.6.136; from 6.7 before 6.12.84; from 6.13 before 6.18.25; from 6.19 before 7.0.2; 7.1-rc1 — fixed in 6.12.84, 6.18.25, 6.6.136, 7.0.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.12.84, 6.18.25, 6.6.136, 7.0.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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