CVE-2021-47145 btrfs: do not BUG_ON in link_to_fixup_dir

Medium 5.5 Published 25 Mar 2024 Updated 11 May 2026

A local attacker can cause a kernel panic and system crash by mounting a specially crafted Btrfs filesystem, leading to denial of service.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Any signed-in user
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: Available

What is CVE-2021-47145?

CVE-2021-47145 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 25 Mar 2024. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

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

btrfs: do not BUG_ON in link_to_fixup_dir

While doing error injection testing I got the following panic

kernel BUG at fs/btrfs/tree-log.c:1862! invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI CPU: 1 PID: 7836 Comm: mount Not tainted 5.13.0-rc1+ #305 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS 1.13.0-2.fc32 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:link_to_fixup_dir+0xd5/0xe0 RSP: 0018:ffffb5800180fa30 EFLAGS: 00010216 RAX: fffffffffffffffb RBX: 00000000fffffffb RCX: ffff8f595287faf0 RDX: ffffb5800180fa37 RSI: ffff8f5954978800 RDI: 0000000000000000 RBP: ffff8f5953af9450 R08: 0000000000000019 R09: 0000000000000001 R10: 000151f408682970 R11: 0000000120021001 R12: ffff8f5954978800 R13: ffff8f595287faf0 R14: ffff8f5953c77dd0 R15: 0000000000000065 FS: 00007fc5284c8c40(0000) GS:ffff8f59bbd00000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 00007fc5287f47c0 CR3: 000000011275e002 CR4: 0000000000370ee0 Call Trace: replay_one_buffer+0x409/0x470 ? btree_read_extent_buffer_pages+0xd0/0x110 walk_up_log_tree+0x157/0x1e0 walk_log_tree+0xa6/0x1d0 btrfs_recover_log_trees+0x1da/0x360 ? replay_one_extent+0x7b0/0x7b0 open_ctree+0x1486/0x1720 btrfs_mount_root.cold+0x12/0xea ? __kmalloc_track_caller+0x12f/0x240 legacy_get_tree+0x24/0x40 vfs_get_tree+0x22/0xb0 vfs_kern_mount.part.0+0x71/0xb0 btrfs_mount+0x10d/0x380 ? vfs_parse_fs_string+0x4d/0x90 legacy_get_tree+0x24/0x40 vfs_get_tree+0x22/0xb0 path_mount+0x433/0xa10 __x64_sys_mount+0xe3/0x120 do_syscall_64+0x3d/0x80 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x44/0xae

We can get -EIO or any number of legitimate errors from btrfs_search_slot(), panicing here is not the appropriate response. The error path for this code handles errors properly, simply return the error.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-47145?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2021-47145?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2021-47145 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-47145 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2021-47145, GHSA-mh64-ppph-hcxx, UBUNTU-CVE-2021-47145.