CVE-2026-34962 barebox ext4 Directory Parsing Infinite Loop Denial of Service

Medium 6.9 Published 11 May 2026 Updated 18 Jul 2026

Attackers can cause a boot hang in barebox by providing a malicious ext4 image with zero-length directory entries, requiring an upgrade to fix.

Exploited in the wild: Not known
Login needed: Not needed
Attackable: Local or same network only
Victim action needed: Not needed
Fix: None listed

What is CVE-2026-34962?

CVE-2026-34962 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in barebox, published on 11 May 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

barebox version prior to 2026.04.0 contains a denial-of-service vulnerability in ext4 directory parsing in fs/ext4/ext4_common.c where the ext4fs_iterate_dir() function fails to validate that directory entry length values are non-zero. Attackers can supply a malicious ext4 filesystem image with a crafted directory entry containing a direntlen value of 0 to cause an infinite loop during directory listing or path resolution, resulting in the boot process hanging indefinitely.

Weakness: CWE-835

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-34962?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Pengutronix Barebox.

How do I fix CVE-2026-34962?

No fix has been published for CVE-2026-34962 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

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-2026-34962 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-34962 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Sources

Also known as GHSA-gh28-ww79-7h4v.