CVE-2023-54130 hfs/hfsplus: avoid WARN_ON() for sanity check, use proper error handling
A corrupted HFS image triggers a kernel warning, potentially causing a denial of service; attackers can crash the system by mounting malicious filesystems.
- 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-2023-54130?
CVE-2023-54130 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 24 Dec 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:
hfs/hfsplus: avoid WARN_ON() for sanity check, use proper error handling
Commit 55d1cbbbb29e ("hfs/hfsplus: use WARN_ON for sanity check") fixed a build warning by turning a comment into a WARN_ON(), but it turns out that syzbot then complains because it can trigger said warning with a corrupted hfs image.
The warning actually does warn about a bad situation, but we are much better off just handling it as the error it is. So rather than warn about us doing bad things, stop doing the bad things and return -EIO.
While at it, also fix a memory leak that was introduced by an earlier fix for a similar syzbot warning situation, and add a check for one case that historically wasn't handled at all (ie neither comment nor subsequent WARN_ON).
Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-54130?
How do I fix CVE-2023-54130?
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-2023-54130 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-54130 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2023-54130, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-54130, GHSA-2f2v-fxm5-25rj, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-54130.