CVE-2026-89612: ntfs: reject invalid MFT LCNs from boot sector

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-09-11 · updated 2026-10-19

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ntfs: reject invalid MFT LCNs from boot sector The NTFS boot sector stores the MFT and MFTMirr locations as unsigned 64-bit LCNs, but parse_ntfs_boot_sector() decoded them into an s64. A crafted high-bit value could therefore become negative and pass the existing upper-bound check. The invalid value then propagated into the MFT zone allocator and could result in an out-of-bounds access to lcn_empty_bits_per_page.

Affected products

Linux kernel: 7.1 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 7.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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