CVE-2021-47508 btrfs: free exchange changeset on failures

Medium 5.5 Published Updated

A memory leak in the Linux kernel's btrfs filesystem can lead to resource exhaustion and denial of service during direct IO writes.

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-2021-47508?

CVE-2021-47508 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 24 May 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: free exchange changeset on failures

Fstests runs on my VMs have show several kmemleak reports like the following.

unreferenced object 0xffff88811ae59080 (size 64): comm "xfs_io", pid 12124, jiffies 4294987392 (age 6.368s) hex dump (first 32 bytes): 00 c0 1c 00 00 00 00 00 ff cf 1c 00 00 00 00 00 ................ 90 97 e5 1a 81 88 ff ff 90 97 e5 1a 81 88 ff ff ................ backtrace: [<00000000ac0176d2>] ulist_add_merge+0x60/0x150 [btrfs] [<0000000076e9f312>] set_state_bits+0x86/0xc0 [btrfs] [<0000000014fe73d6>] set_extent_bit+0x270/0x690 [btrfs] [<000000004f675208>] set_record_extent_bits+0x19/0x20 [btrfs] [<00000000b96137b1>] qgroup_reserve_data+0x274/0x310 [btrfs] [<0000000057e9dcbb>] btrfs_check_data_free_space+0x5c/0xa0 [btrfs] [<0000000019c4511d>] btrfs_delalloc_reserve_space+0x1b/0xa0 [btrfs] [<000000006d37e007>] btrfs_dio_iomap_begin+0x415/0x970 [btrfs] [<00000000fb8a74b8>] iomap_iter+0x161/0x1e0 [<0000000071dff6ff>] __iomap_dio_rw+0x1df/0x700 [<000000002567ba53>] iomap_dio_rw+0x5/0x20 [<0000000072e555f8>] btrfs_file_write_iter+0x290/0x530 [btrfs] [<000000005eb3d845>] new_sync_write+0x106/0x180 [<000000003fb505bf>] vfs_write+0x24d/0x2f0 [<000000009bb57d37>] __x64_sys_pwrite64+0x69/0xa0 [<000000003eba3fdf>] do_syscall_64+0x43/0x90

In case brtfs_qgroup_reserve_data() or btrfs_delalloc_reserve_metadata() fail the allocated extent_changeset will not be freed.

So in btrfs_check_data_free_space() and btrfs_delalloc_reserve_space() free the allocated extent_changeset to get rid of the allocated memory.

The issue currently only happens in the direct IO write path, but only after 65b3c08606e5 ("btrfs: fix ENOSPC failure when attempting direct IO write into NOCOW range"), and also at defrag_one_locked_target(). Every other place is always calling extent_changeset_free() even if its call to btrfs_delalloc_reserve_space() or btrfs_check_data_free_space() has failed.

Weakness: CWE-401

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-47508?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2021-47508?

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-2021-47508 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-47508 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2021-47508, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2021-47508, UBUNTU-CVE-2021-47508.

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