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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2023-54121 json

btrfs: fix incorrect splitting in btrfs_drop_extent_map_range

published 2025-12-24 10 mo ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2023-60324

cvss
7.8
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 5%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

btrfs: fix incorrect splitting in btrfs_drop_extent_map_range

In production we were seeing a variety of WARN_ON()'s in the extent_map code, specifically in btrfs_drop_extent_map_range() when we have to call add_extent_mapping() for our second split.

Consider the following extent map layout

PINNED [0 16K) [32K, 48K)

and then we call btrfs_drop_extent_map_range for [0, 36K), with skip_pinned == true. The initial loop will have

start = 0 end = 36K len = 36K

we will find the [0, 16k) extent, but since we are pinned we will skip it, which has this code

start = em_end; if (end != (u64)-1) len = start + len - em_end;

em_end here is 16K, so now the values are

start = 16K len = 16K + 36K - 16K = 36K

len should instead be 20K. This is a problem when we find the next extent at [32K, 48K), we need to split this extent to leave [36K, 48k), however the code for the split looks like this

split->start = start + len; split->len = em_end - (start + len);

In this case we have

em_end = 48K split->start = 16K + 36K // this should be 16K + 20K split->len = 48K - (16K + 36K) // this overflows as 16K + 36K is 52K

and now we have an invalid extent_map in the tree that potentially overlaps other entries in the extent map. Even in the non-overlapping case we will have split->start set improperly, which will cause problems with any block related calculations.

We don't actually need len in this loop, we can simply use end as our end point, and only adjust start up when we find a pinned extent we need to skip.

Adjust the logic to do this, which keeps us from inserting an invalid extent map.

We only skip_pinned in the relocation case, so this is relatively rare, except in the case where you are running relocation a lot, which can happen with auto relocation on.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 2.6.33, 6.1.47, 6.4.12, 6.5
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.52-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.4.13-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-54121

  • kernel-rt Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-40.1
  • kernel-source-rt Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-40.1
  • kernel-source Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1
  • kernel-default Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1
  • kernel-kvmsmall Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1
  • kernel-default-base Linux Micro 6.1, Linux Micro 6.0 6.4.0-39.1.21.16
  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.28.1
  • kernel-syms SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.28.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:20845-1SUSE-SU-2026:20876-1SUSE-SU-2026:20477-1SUSE-SU-2026:20498-1SUSE-SU-2026:0473-1SUSE-SU-2026:0315-1

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-2023-54121 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: btrfs: fix incorrect splitting in btrfs_drop_extent_map_range

  • 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
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • 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

Exploit prediction

0.16% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 5% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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