# CVE-2024-49958: ocfs2: reserve space for inline xattr before attaching reflink tree

> A flaw in the OCFS2 filesystem allows a crash and filesystem corruption due to improper space reservation during reflink operations.

- **Severity:** High 7.8 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H`)
- **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:** Yes
- **Published:** 21 Oct 2024
- **Updated:** 5 Aug 2026
- **Also known as:** AZL-52290, BELL-CVE-2024-49958, DEBIAN-CVE-2024-49958, GHSA-9x5x-jw3v-frfw, UBUNTU-CVE-2024-49958

## What is CVE-2024-49958?

CVE-2024-49958 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 21 Oct 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:

ocfs2: reserve space for inline xattr before attaching reflink tree

One of our customers reported a crash and a corrupted ocfs2 filesystem. 
The crash was due to the detection of corruption.  Upon troubleshooting,
the fsck -fn output showed the below corruption

[EXTENT_LIST_FREE] Extent list in owner 33080590 claims 230 as the next free chain record,
but fsck believes the largest valid value is 227.  Clamp the next record value? n

The stat output from the debugfs.ocfs2 showed the following corruption
where the "Next Free Rec:" had overshot the "Count:" in the root metadata
block.

        Inode: 33080590   Mode: 0640   Generation: 2619713622 (0x9c25a856)
        FS Generation: 904309833 (0x35e6ac49)
        CRC32: 00000000   ECC: 0000
        Type: Regular   Attr: 0x0   Flags: Valid
        Dynamic Features: (0x16) HasXattr InlineXattr Refcounted
        Extended Attributes Block: 0  Extended Attributes Inline Size: 256
        User: 0 (root)   Group: 0 (root)   Size: 281320357888
        Links: 1   Clusters: 141738
        ctime: 0x66911b56 0x316edcb8 -- Fri Jul 12 06:02:30.829349048 2024
        atime: 0x66911d6b 0x7f7a28d -- Fri Jul 12 06:11:23.133669517 2024
        mtime: 0x66911b56 0x12ed75d7 -- Fri Jul 12 06:02:30.317552087 2024
        dtime: 0x0 -- Wed Dec 31 17:00:00 1969
        Refcount Block: 2777346
        Last Extblk: 2886943   Orphan Slot: 0
        Sub Alloc Slot: 0   Sub Alloc Bit: 14
        Tree Depth: 1   Count: 227   Next Free Rec: 230
        ## Offset        Clusters       Block#
        0  0             2310           2776351
        1  2310          2139           2777375
        2  4449          1221           2778399
        3  5670          731            2779423
        4  6401          566            2780447
        .......          ....           .......
        .......          ....           .......

The issue was in the reflink workfow while reserving space for inline
xattr.  The problematic function is ocfs2_reflink_xattr_inline().  By the
time this function is called the reflink tree is already recreated at the
destination inode from the source inode.  At this point, this function
reserves space for inline xattrs at the destination inode without even
checking if there is space at the root metadata block.  It simply reduces
the l_count from 243 to 227 thereby making space of 256 bytes for inline
xattr whereas the inode already has extents beyond this index (in this
case up to 230), thereby causing corruption.

The fix for this is to reserve space for inline metadata at the destination
inode before the reflink tree gets recreated. The customer has verified the
fix.

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2024-49958?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Linux kernel.

## How do I fix CVE-2024-49958?

Apply the vendor's patch.

## Is CVE-2024-49958 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-49958 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

- [CVE-2026-53266](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53266/): Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-6282](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-6282/): Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2022-0185](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-0185/): Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2013-2094](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2013-2094/): Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation (high 8.4, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-53362](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-53362/): Linux Kernel Unspecified (high 7.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2024-49958 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2024-49958 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 21 Oct 2024. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2024-49958 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Linux kernel. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-49958/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-49958/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-49958
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-49958
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2024-49958

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-49958/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.
