CVE-2025-39879 ceph: always call ceph_shift_unused_folios_left()

What is CVE-2025-39879?

CVE-2025-39879 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 23 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:

ceph: always call ceph_shift_unused_folios_left()

The function ceph_process_folio_batch() sets folio_batch entries to NULL, which is an illegal state. Before folio_batch_release() crashes due to this API violation, the function ceph_shift_unused_folios_left() is supposed to remove those NULLs from the array.

However, since commit ce80b76dd327 ("ceph: introduce ceph_process_folio_batch() method"), this shifting doesn't happen anymore because the "for" loop got moved to ceph_process_folio_batch(), and now the `i` variable that remains in ceph_writepages_start() doesn't get incremented anymore, making the shifting effectively unreachable much of the time.

Later, commit 1551ec61dc55 ("ceph: introduce ceph_submit_write() method") added more preconditions for doing the shift, replacing the `i` check (with something that is still just as broken):

- if ceph_process_folio_batch() fails, shifting never happens

- if ceph_move_dirty_page_in_page_array() was never called (because ceph_process_folio_batch() has returned early for some of various reasons), shifting never happens

- if `processed_in_fbatch` is zero (because ceph_process_folio_batch() has returned early for some of the reasons mentioned above or because ceph_move_dirty_page_in_page_array() has failed), shifting never happens

Since those two commits, any problem in ceph_process_folio_batch() could crash the kernel, e.g. this way:

BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000034 #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI CPU: 172 UID: 0 PID: 2342707 Comm: kworker/u778:8 Not tainted 6.15.10-cm4all1-es #714 NONE Hardware name: Dell Inc. PowerEdge R7615/0G9DHV, BIOS 1.6.10 12/08/2023 Workqueue: writeback wb_workfn (flush-ceph-1) RIP: 0010:folios_put_refs+0x85/0x140 Code: 83 c5 01 39 e8 7e 76 48 63 c5 49 8b 5c c4 08 b8 01 00 00 00 4d 85 ed 74 05 41 8b 44 ad 00 48 8b 15 b0 > RSP: 0018:ffffb880af8db778 EFLAGS: 00010207 RAX: 0000000000000001 RBX: 0000000000000000 RCX: 0000000000000003 RDX: ffffe377cc3b0000 RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: ffffb880af8db8c0 RBP: 0000000000000000 R08: 000000000000007d R09: 000000000102b86f R10: 0000000000000001 R11: 00000000000000ac R12: ffffb880af8db8c0 R13: 0000000000000000 R14: 0000000000000000 R15: ffff9bd262c97000 FS: 0000000000000000(0000) GS:ffff9c8efc303000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 CR2: 0000000000000034 CR3: 0000000160958004 CR4: 0000000000770ef0 PKRU: 55555554 Call Trace: <TASK> ceph_writepages_start+0xeb9/0x1410

The crash can be reproduced easily by changing the ceph_check_page_before_write() return value to `-E2BIG`.

(Interestingly, the crash happens only if `huge_zero_folio` has already been allocated; without `huge_zero_folio`, is_huge_zero_folio(NULL) returns true and folios_put_refs() skips NULL entries instead of dereferencing them. That makes reproducing the bug somewhat unreliable. See https://lore.kernel.org/[email protected] for a discussion of this detail.)

My suggestion is to move the ceph_shift_unused_folios_left() to right after ceph_process_folio_batch() to ensure it always gets called to fix up the illegal folio_batch state.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-39879?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2025-39879?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2025-39879 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-39879 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 BELL-CVE-2025-39879, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-39879, GHSA-hq23-ggcp-mx5x, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-39879.