CVE-2026-64296: exfat: bound uniname advance in exfat_find_dir_entry()

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 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: 2026-07-25 · updated 2026-10-19
Weakness: CWE-787

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: exfat: bound uniname advance in exfat_find_dir_entry() In exfat_find_dir_entry(), each TYPE_EXTEND (file name) entry advances the output pointer by a fixed amount while the loop guard only tracks the accumulated name length: if (++order == 2) uniname = p_uniname->name; else uniname += EXFAT_FILE_NAME_LEN; len = exfat_extract_uni_name(ep, entry_uniname); name_len += len; unichar = *(uniname+len); *(uniname+len) = 0x0; uniname grows by EXFAT_FILE_NAME_LEN (15) per name entry, but name_len grows only by the actual extracted length, which is shorter when a name fragment contains an early NUL. The only guard is `name_len >= MAX_NAME_LENGTH`, so a crafted directory with many short name fragments lets uniname run far past the p_uniname->name[MAX_NAME_LENGTH + 3] buffer while name_len stays small, causing an out-of-bounds read and write at *(uniname+len). The sibling extractor exfat_get_uniname_from_ext_entry() already stops on a short fragment (the lockstep `len != EXFAT_FILE_NAME_LEN` guard added in commit d42334578eba ("exfat: check if filename entries exceeds max filename length")); exfat_find_dir_entry() never got the equivalent. Track the per-entry write offset as a count and reject a fragment once the offset, or the offset plus the extracted length, would exceed MAX_NAME_LENGTH, before forming the output pointer.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.7 before 5.10.261; from 5.11 before 5.15.212; from 5.16 before 6.1.178; from 6.2 before 6.6.145; from 6.7 before 6.12.96; from 6.13 before 6.18.39 — fixed in 5.10.261, 5.15.212, 6.1.178, 6.12.96, 6.18.39, 6.6.145

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.261, 5.15.212, 6.1.178, 6.12.96. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2026-64296 or the next vulnerability affects your stack