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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2021-47637 json

ubifs: Fix deadlock in concurrent rename whiteout and inode writeback

published 2025-02-26 20 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2021-34667

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 8%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ubifs: Fix deadlock in concurrent rename whiteout and inode writeback

Following hung tasks: [ 77.028764] task:kworker/u8:4 state:D stack: 0 pid: 132 [ 77.028820] Call Trace: [ 77.029027] schedule+0x8c/0x1b0 [ 77.029067] mutex_lock+0x50/0x60 [ 77.029074] ubifs_write_inode+0x68/0x1f0 [ubifs] [ 77.029117] __writeback_single_inode+0x43c/0x570 [ 77.029128] writeback_sb_inodes+0x259/0x740 [ 77.029148] wb_writeback+0x107/0x4d0 [ 77.029163] wb_workfn+0x162/0x7b0

[ 92.390442] task:aa state:D stack: 0 pid: 1506 [ 92.390448] Call Trace: [ 92.390458] schedule+0x8c/0x1b0 [ 92.390461] wb_wait_for_completion+0x82/0xd0 [ 92.390469] __writeback_inodes_sb_nr+0xb2/0x110 [ 92.390472] writeback_inodes_sb_nr+0x14/0x20 [ 92.390476] ubifs_budget_space+0x705/0xdd0 [ubifs] [ 92.390503] do_rename.cold+0x7f/0x187 [ubifs] [ 92.390549] ubifs_rename+0x8b/0x180 [ubifs] [ 92.390571] vfs_rename+0xdb2/0x1170 [ 92.390580] do_renameat2+0x554/0x770

, are caused by concurrent rename whiteout and inode writeback processes: rename_whiteout(Thread 1) wb_workfn(Thread2) ubifs_rename do_rename lock_4_inodes (Hold ui_mutex) ubifs_budget_space make_free_space shrink_liability __writeback_inodes_sb_nr bdi_split_work_to_wbs (Queue new wb work) wb_do_writeback(wb work) __writeback_single_inode ubifs_write_inode LOCK(ui_mutex) ↑ wb_wait_for_completion (Wait wb work) <-- deadlock!

Reproducer (Detail program in [Link]): 1. SYS_renameat2("/mp/dir/file", "/mp/dir/whiteout", RENAME_WHITEOUT) 2. Consume out of space before kernel(mdelay) doing budget for whiteout

Fix it by doing whiteout space budget before locking ubifs inodes. BTW, it also fixes wrong goto tag 'out_release' in whiteout budget error handling path(It should at least recover dir i_size and unlock 4 ubifs inodes).

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 4.19.238, 5.4.189, 5.10.110, 5.15.33, 5.16.19, 5.17.2, 5.18
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 5.17.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2021-47637

  • linux Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-189.200
  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-117.132
  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-37.39
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 4.15.0-1137.148
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1078.84
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1011.14
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1078.84
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1008.12

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2021-47637

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-ESPOS 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +3 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP5-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP5, SLES 15 SP5-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.5 +2 more 5.14.21-150500.55.100.1.150500.6.47.1
  • kernel-rt SLE Micro 5.4, SLE Micro 5.3 5.14.21-150400.15.115.1
  • kernel-source-rt SLE Micro 5.4, SLE Micro 5.3 5.14.21-150400.15.115.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:1241-1SUSE-SU-2025:1183-1SUSE-SU-2025:1176-1SUSE-SU-2025:1027-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2021-47637 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: ubifs: Fix deadlock in concurrent rename whiteout and inode writeback

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
13 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CNA 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.