CVE-2026-23249 xfs: check for deleted cursors when revalidating two btrees

What is CVE-2026-23249?

CVE-2026-23249 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 18 Mar 2026. 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: check for deleted cursors when revalidating two btrees

The free space and inode btree repair functions will rebuild both btrees at the same time, after which it needs to evaluate both btrees to confirm that the corruptions are gone.

However, Jiaming Zhang ran syzbot and produced a crash in the second xchk_allocbt call. His root-cause analysis is as follows (with minor corrections):

In xrep_revalidate_allocbt(), xchk_allocbt() is called twice (first for BNOBT, second for CNTBT). The cause of this issue is that the first call nullified the cursor required by the second call.

Let's first enter xrep_revalidate_allocbt() via following call chain:

xfs_file_ioctl() -> xfs_ioc_scrubv_metadata() -> xfs_scrub_metadata() -> `sc->ops->repair_eval(sc)` -> xrep_revalidate_allocbt()

xchk_allocbt() is called twice in this function. In the first call:

/* Note that sc->sm->sm_type is XFS_SCRUB_TYPE_BNOPT now */ xchk_allocbt() -> xchk_btree() -> `bs->scrub_rec(bs, recp)` -> xchk_allocbt_rec() -> xchk_allocbt_xref() -> xchk_allocbt_xref_other()

since sm_type is XFS_SCRUB_TYPE_BNOBT, pur is set to &sc->sa.cnt_cur. Kernel called xfs_alloc_get_rec() and returned -EFSCORRUPTED. Call chain:

xfs_alloc_get_rec() -> xfs_btree_get_rec() -> xfs_btree_check_block() -> (XFS_IS_CORRUPT || XFS_TEST_ERROR), the former is false and the latter is true, return -EFSCORRUPTED. This should be caused by ioctl$XFS_IOC_ERROR_INJECTION I guess.

Back to xchk_allocbt_xref_other(), after receiving -EFSCORRUPTED from xfs_alloc_get_rec(), kernel called xchk_should_check_xref(). In this function, *curpp (points to sc->sa.cnt_cur) is nullified.

Back to xrep_revalidate_allocbt(), since sc->sa.cnt_cur has been nullified, it then triggered null-ptr-deref via xchk_allocbt() (second call) -> xchk_btree().

So. The bnobt revalidation failed on a cross-reference attempt, so we deleted the cntbt cursor, and then crashed when we tried to revalidate the cntbt. Therefore, check for a null cntbt cursor before that revalidation, and mark the repair incomplete. Also we can ignore the second tree entirely if the first tree was rebuilt but is already corrupt.

Apply the same fix to xrep_revalidate_iallocbt because it has the same problem.

Weakness: CWE-476

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-23249?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-23249?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2026-23249 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-23249 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-2026-23249, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-23249, GHSA-w9wm-69p8-g28q, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2026-23249, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2026-23249, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-23249.