CVE-2025-68351 exfat: fix refcount leak in exfat_find

Medium 5.5 Published Updated

A refcount leak in the Linux kernel's exFAT filesystem can lead to resource exhaustion and denial of service.

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-2025-68351?

CVE-2025-68351 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, 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:

exfat: fix refcount leak in exfat_find

Fix refcount leaks in `exfat_find` related to `exfat_get_dentry_set`.

Function `exfat_get_dentry_set` would increase the reference counter of `es->bh` on success. Therefore, `exfat_put_dentry_set` must be called after `exfat_get_dentry_set` to ensure refcount consistency. This patch relocate two checks to avoid possible leaks.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-68351?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2025-68351?

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-2025-68351 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-68351 in the wild and no public exploit code.

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-68351, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68351, GHSA-4f82-h634-f877, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-68351, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2025-68351, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-68351.

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