CVE-2023-53618

MEDIUM

Linux kernel - Info Disclosure

Title source: llm

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: btrfs: reject invalid reloc tree root keys with stack dump [BUG] Syzbot reported a crash that an ASSERT() got triggered inside prepare_to_merge(). That ASSERT() makes sure the reloc tree is properly pointed back by its subvolume tree. [CAUSE] After more debugging output, it turns out we had an invalid reloc tree: BTRFS error (device loop1): reloc tree mismatch, root 8 has no reloc root, expect reloc root key (-8, 132, 8) gen 17 Note the above root key is (TREE_RELOC_OBJECTID, ROOT_ITEM, QUOTA_TREE_OBJECTID), meaning it's a reloc tree for quota tree. But reloc trees can only exist for subvolumes, as for non-subvolume trees, we just COW the involved tree block, no need to create a reloc tree since those tree blocks won't be shared with other trees. Only subvolumes tree can share tree blocks with other trees (thus they have BTRFS_ROOT_SHAREABLE flag). Thus this new debug output proves my previous assumption that corrupted on-disk data can trigger that ASSERT(). [FIX] Besides the dedicated fix and the graceful exit, also let tree-checker to check such root keys, to make sure reloc trees can only exist for subvolumes.

Scores

CVSS v3 5.5
EPSS 0.0001
EPSS Percentile 1.1%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Classification

Status published

Affected Products (6)

linux/linux_kernel < 5.3
linux/linux_kernel
linux/linux_kernel
linux/linux_kernel
linux/linux_kernel
linux/linux_kernel

Timeline

Published Oct 07, 2025
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026