CVE-2022-50293 btrfs: do not BUG_ON() on ENOMEM when dropping extent items for a range

What is CVE-2022-50293?

CVE-2022-50293 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 15 Sep 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:

btrfs: do not BUG_ON() on ENOMEM when dropping extent items for a range

If we get -ENOMEM while dropping file extent items in a given range, at btrfs_drop_extents(), due to failure to allocate memory when attempting to increment the reference count for an extent or drop the reference count, we handle it with a BUG_ON(). This is excessive, instead we can simply abort the transaction and return the error to the caller. In fact most callers of btrfs_drop_extents(), directly or indirectly, already abort the transaction if btrfs_drop_extents() returns any error.

Also, we already have error paths at btrfs_drop_extents() that may return -ENOMEM and in those cases we abort the transaction, like for example anything that changes the b+tree may return -ENOMEM due to a failure to allocate a new extent buffer when COWing an existing extent buffer, such as a call to btrfs_duplicate_item() for example.

So replace the BUG_ON() calls with proper logic to abort the transaction and return the error.

Weakness: CWE-617

Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-50293?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2022-50293?

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-2022-50293 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-50293 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2022-50293, GHSA-45cv-7v28-m46p, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2022-50293, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-50293.