CVE-2025-21658

MediumCVSS 5.5/10Last modified Jun 17, 2026

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid extent tree

[BUG] Syzbot reported a crash with the following call trace:

BTRFS info (device loop0): scrub: started on devid 1 BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000208 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 106e70067 P4D 106e70067 PUD 107143067 PMD 0 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 689 Comm: repro Kdump: loaded Tainted: G O 6.13.0-rc4-custom+ #206 Tainted: [O]=OOT_MODULE Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS unknown 02/02/2022 RIP: 0010:find_first_extent_item+0x26/0x1f0 [btrfs] Call Trace: <TASK> scrub_find_fill_first_stripe+0x13d/0x3b0 [btrfs] scrub_simple_mirror+0x175/0x260 [btrfs] scrub_stripe+0x5d4/0x6c0 [btrfs] scrub_chunk+0xbb/0x170 [btrfs] scrub_enumerate_chunks+0x2f4/0x5f0 [btrfs] btrfs_scrub_dev+0x240/0x600 [btrfs] btrfs_ioctl+0x1dc8/0x2fa0 [btrfs] ? do_sys_openat2+0xa5/0xf0 __x64_sys_ioctl+0x97/0xc0 do_syscall_64+0x4f/0x120 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e </TASK>

[CAUSE] The reproducer is using a corrupted image where extent tree root is corrupted, thus forcing to use "rescue=all,ro" mount option to mount the image.

Then it triggered a scrub, but since scrub relies on extent tree to find where the data/metadata extents are, scrub_find_fill_first_stripe() relies on an non-empty extent root.

But unfortunately scrub_find_fill_first_stripe() doesn't really expect an NULL pointer for extent root, it use extent_root to grab fs_info and triggered a NULL pointer dereference.

[FIX] Add an extra check for a valid extent root at the beginning of scrub_find_fill_first_stripe().

The new error path is introduced by 42437a6386ff ("btrfs: introduce mount option rescue=ignorebadroots"), but that's pretty old, and later commit b979547513ff ("btrfs: scrub: introduce helper to find and fill sector info for a scrub_stripe") changed how we do scrub.

So for kernels older than 6.6, the fix will need manual backport.

Metrics

CVSS 3.1 5.5/10CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Weakness enumeration

Affected software

No affected versions have been published.

Timeline

Published
Jan 21, 2025
Last modified
Jun 17, 2026
NVD status
Modified

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CVE-2025-21658: Medium severity, CVSS 5.5 | Vulnix