CVE-2025-40246 xfs: fix out of bounds memory read error in symlink repair
A local attacker with high privileges can trigger an out-of-bounds memory read in the XFS symlink repair code, potentially causing a system crash or leaking kernel memory.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- An administrator
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2025-40246?
CVE-2025-40246 is a memory corruption vulnerability in Linux, published on 4 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:
xfs: fix out of bounds memory read error in symlink repair
xfs/286 produced this report on my test fleet:
================================================================== BUG: KFENCE: out-of-bounds read in memcpy_orig+0x54/0x110
Out-of-bounds read at 0xffff88843fe9e038 (184B right of kfence-#184): memcpy_orig+0x54/0x110 xrep_symlink_salvage_inline+0xb3/0xf0 [xfs] xrep_symlink_salvage+0x100/0x110 [xfs] xrep_symlink+0x2e/0x80 [xfs] xrep_attempt+0x61/0x1f0 [xfs] xfs_scrub_metadata+0x34f/0x5c0 [xfs] xfs_ioc_scrubv_metadata+0x387/0x560 [xfs] xfs_file_ioctl+0xe23/0x10e0 [xfs] __x64_sys_ioctl+0x76/0xc0 do_syscall_64+0x4e/0x1e0 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53
kfence-#184: 0xffff88843fe9df80-0xffff88843fe9dfea, size=107, cache=kmalloc-128
allocated by task 3470 on cpu 1 at 263329.131592s (192823.508886s ago): xfs_init_local_fork+0x79/0xe0 [xfs] xfs_iformat_local+0xa4/0x170 [xfs] xfs_iformat_data_fork+0x148/0x180 [xfs] xfs_inode_from_disk+0x2cd/0x480 [xfs] xfs_iget+0x450/0xd60 [xfs] xfs_bulkstat_one_int+0x6b/0x510 [xfs] xfs_bulkstat_iwalk+0x1e/0x30 [xfs] xfs_iwalk_ag_recs+0xdf/0x150 [xfs] xfs_iwalk_run_callbacks+0xb9/0x190 [xfs] xfs_iwalk_ag+0x1dc/0x2f0 [xfs] xfs_iwalk_args.constprop.0+0x6a/0x120 [xfs] xfs_iwalk+0xa4/0xd0 [xfs] xfs_bulkstat+0xfa/0x170 [xfs] xfs_ioc_fsbulkstat.isra.0+0x13a/0x230 [xfs] xfs_file_ioctl+0xbf2/0x10e0 [xfs] __x64_sys_ioctl+0x76/0xc0 do_syscall_64+0x4e/0x1e0 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x4b/0x53
CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 1300113 Comm: xfs_scrub Not tainted 6.18.0-rc4-djwx #rc4 PREEMPT(lazy) 3d744dd94e92690f00a04398d2bd8631dcef1954 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.0-4.module+el8.8.0+21164+ed375313 04/01/2014 ==================================================================
On further analysis, I realized that the second parameter to min() is not correct. xfs_ifork::if_bytes is the size of the xfs_ifork::if_data buffer. if_bytes can be smaller than the data fork size because:
(a) the forkoff code tries to keep the data area as large as possible (b) for symbolic links, if_bytes is the ondisk file size + 1 (c) forkoff is always a multiple of 8.
Case in point: for a single-byte symlink target, forkoff will be 8 but the buffer will only be 2 bytes long.
In other words, the logic here is wrong and we walk off the end of the incore buffer. Fix that.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-40246?
How do I fix CVE-2025-40246?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade to the fixed version. Memory-safe languages, compiler hardening and fuzzing prevent most new cases. More about Memory corruption.
Is CVE-2025-40246 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-40246 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-40246, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-40246, GHSA-x6g9-37j8-7qh9, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-40246, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-40246.