Linux Kernel XFS Symlink Repair OOB Read
CVE-2025-40246 Published on December 4, 2025
xfs: fix out of bounds memory read error in symlink repair
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
xfs: fix out of bounds memory read error in symlink repair
xfs/286 produced this report on my test fleet:
==================================================================
BUG: KFENCE: out-of-bounds read in memcpy_orig+0x54/0x110
Out-of-bounds read at 0xffff88843fe9e038 (184B right of kfence-#184):
memcpy_orig+0x54/0x110
xrep_symlink_salvage_inline+0xb3/0xf0 [xfs]
xrep_symlink_salvage+0x100/0x110 [xfs]
xrep_symlink+0x2e/0x80 [xfs]
xrep_attempt+0x61/0x1f0 [xfs]
xfs_scrub_metadata+0x34f/0x5c0 [xfs]
xfs_ioc_scrubv_metadata+0x387/0x560 [xfs]
xfs_file_ioctl+0xe23/0x10e0 [xfs]
__x64_sys_ioctl+0x76/0xc0
do_syscall_64+0x4e/0x1e0
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53
kfence-#184: 0xffff88843fe9df80-0xffff88843fe9dfea, size=107, cache=kmalloc-128
allocated by task 3470 on cpu 1 at 263329.131592s (192823.508886s ago):
xfs_init_local_fork+0x79/0xe0 [xfs]
xfs_iformat_local+0xa4/0x170 [xfs]
xfs_iformat_data_fork+0x148/0x180 [xfs]
xfs_inode_from_disk+0x2cd/0x480 [xfs]
xfs_iget+0x450/0xd60 [xfs]
xfs_bulkstat_one_int+0x6b/0x510 [xfs]
xfs_bulkstat_iwalk+0x1e/0x30 [xfs]
xfs_iwalk_ag_recs+0xdf/0x150 [xfs]
xfs_iwalk_run_callbacks+0xb9/0x190 [xfs]
xfs_iwalk_ag+0x1dc/0x2f0 [xfs]
xfs_iwalk_args.constprop.0+0x6a/0x120 [xfs]
xfs_iwalk+0xa4/0xd0 [xfs]
xfs_bulkstat+0xfa/0x170 [xfs]
xfs_ioc_fsbulkstat.isra.0+0x13a/0x230 [xfs]
xfs_file_ioctl+0xbf2/0x10e0 [xfs]
__x64_sys_ioctl+0x76/0xc0
do_syscall_64+0x4e/0x1e0
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53
CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 1300113 Comm: xfs_scrub Not tainted 6.18.0-rc4-djwx #rc4 PREEMPT(lazy) 3d744dd94e92690f00a04398d2bd8631dcef1954
Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.0-4.module+el8.8.0+21164+ed375313 04/01/2014
==================================================================
On further analysis, I realized that the second parameter to min() is
not correct. xfs_ifork::if_bytes is the size of the xfs_ifork::if_data
buffer. if_bytes can be smaller than the data fork size because:
(a) the forkoff code tries to keep the data area as large as possible
(b) for symbolic links, if_bytes is the ondisk file size + 1
(c) forkoff is always a multiple of 8.
Case in point: for a single-byte symlink target, forkoff will be
8 but the buffer will only be 2 bytes long.
In other words, the logic here is wrong and we walk off the end of the
incore buffer. Fix that.
Products Associated with CVE-2025-40246
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Affected Versions
Linux:- Version 2651923d8d8db00a57665822f017fa7c76758044 and below 7c2d68e091584149fe89bcbaf9b99b3162d46ee7 is affected.
- Version 2651923d8d8db00a57665822f017fa7c76758044 and below 81a8685cac4bf081c93a7df591644f4f80240bb9 is affected.
- Version 2651923d8d8db00a57665822f017fa7c76758044 and below 678e1cc2f482e0985a0613ab4a5bf89c497e5acc is affected.
- Version 6.10 is affected.
- Before 6.10 is unaffected.
- Version 6.12.60, <= 6.12.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.17.10, <= 6.17.* is unaffected.
- Version 6.18, <= * is unaffected.
Exploit Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) scores estimate the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. The percentile shows you how this score compares to all other vulnerabilities.