CVE-2022-50020 ext4: avoid resizing to a partial cluster size
A local attacker can trigger a kernel crash and filesystem corruption by resizing an ext4 filesystem to a size that is not aligned with the cluster size.
- 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-2022-50020?
CVE-2022-50020 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 18 Jun 2025. 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:
ext4: avoid resizing to a partial cluster size
This patch avoids an attempt to resize the filesystem to an unaligned cluster boundary. An online resize to a size that is not integral to cluster size results in the last iteration attempting to grow the fs by a negative amount, which trips a BUG_ON and leaves the fs with a corrupted in-memory superblock.
Weakness: CWE-1284
Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-50020?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Linux kernel.
How do I fix CVE-2022-50020?
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-2022-50020 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-50020 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50020, GHSA-hhx5-crr2-8g8p, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50020.