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Fencer Vulns
high 7.8

CVE-2024-38306 json

btrfs: protect folio::private when attaching extent buffer folios

published 2024-06-25 2 y ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2024-37258

cvss
7.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 3%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

btrfs: protect folio::private when attaching extent buffer folios

[BUG] Since v6.8 there are rare kernel crashes reported by various people, the common factor is bad page status error messages like this:

BUG: Bad page state in process kswapd0 pfn:d6e840 page: refcount:0 mapcount:0 mapping:000000007512f4f2 index:0x2796c2c7c pfn:0xd6e840 aops:btree_aops ino:1 flags: 0x17ffffe0000008(uptodate|node=0|zone=2|lastcpupid=0x3fffff) page_type: 0xffffffff() raw: 0017ffffe0000008 dead000000000100 dead000000000122 ffff88826d0be4c0 raw: 00000002796c2c7c 0000000000000000 00000000ffffffff 0000000000000000 page dumped because: non-NULL mapping

[CAUSE] Commit 09e6cef19c9f ("btrfs: refactor alloc_extent_buffer() to allocate-then-attach method") changes the sequence when allocating a new extent buffer.

Previously we always called grab_extent_buffer() under mapping->i_private_lock, to ensure the safety on modification on folio::private (which is a pointer to extent buffer for regular sectorsize).

This can lead to the following race:

Thread A is trying to allocate an extent buffer at bytenr X, with 4 4K pages, meanwhile thread B is trying to release the page at X + 4K (the second page of the extent buffer at X).

Thread A | Thread B -----------------------------------+------------------------------------- | btree_release_folio() | | This is for the page at X + 4K, | | Not page X. | | alloc_extent_buffer() | |- release_extent_buffer() |- filemap_add_folio() for the | | |- atomic_dec_and_test(eb->refs) | page at bytenr X (the first | | | | page). | | | | Which returned -EEXIST. | | | | | | | |- filemap_lock_folio() | | | | Returned the first page locked. | | | | | | | |- grab_extent_buffer() | | | | |- atomic_inc_not_zero() | | | | | Returned false | | | | |- folio_detach_private() | | |- folio_detach_private() for X | |- folio_test_private() | | |- folio_test_private() | Returned true | | | Returned true |- folio_put() | |- folio_put()

Now there are two puts on the same folio at folio X, leading to refcount underflow of the folio X, and eventually causing the BUG_ON() on the page->mapping.

The condition is not that easy to hit:

- The release must be triggered for the middle page of an eb If the release is on the same first page of an eb, page lock would kick in and prevent the race.

- folio_detach_private() has a very small race window It's only between folio_test_private() and folio_clear_private().

That's exactly when mapping->i_private_lock is used to prevent such race, and commit 09e6cef19c9f ("btrfs: refactor alloc_extent_buffer() to allocate-then-attach method") screwed that up.

At that time, I thought the page lock would kick in as filemap_release_folio() also requires the page to be locked, but forgot the filemap_release_folio() only locks one page, not all pages of an extent buffer.

[FIX] Move all the code requiring i_private_lock into attach_eb_folio_to_filemap(), so that everything is done with proper lock protection.

Furthermore to prevent future problems, add an extra lockdep_assert_locked() to ensure we're holding the proper lock.

To reproducer that is able to hit the race (takes a few minutes with instrumented code inserting delays to alloc_extent_buffer()):

#!/bin/sh drop_caches () { while(true); do echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/compact_memory done }

run_tar () { while(true); do for x in `seq 1 80` ; do tar cf /dev/zero /mnt > /dev/null & done wait done }

mkfs.btrfs -f -d single -m single ---truncated---

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.9.5, 6.10
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.9.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2024-38306

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-44.44
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1015.16
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1014.16
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1010.13
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1012.12
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1014.16
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1011.12
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-44.44.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2024-38306

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

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-2024-38306 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: btrfs: protect folio::private when attaching extent buffer folios

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • 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
    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
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

0.15% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 3% 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
NVD 3.1 4.7 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization
  • CWE-617 Reachable Assertion
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.