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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2025-21658 json

btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid extent tree

published 2025-01-21 21 mo ago modified 2026-10-30 10 d ago also EUVD-2025-2607

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 10%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid extent tree

[BUG] Syzbot reported a crash with the following call trace:

BTRFS info (device loop0): scrub: started on devid 1 BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000208 #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page PGD 106e70067 P4D 106e70067 PUD 107143067 PMD 0 Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP NOPTI CPU: 1 UID: 0 PID: 689 Comm: repro Kdump: loaded Tainted: G O 6.13.0-rc4-custom+ #206 Tainted: [O]=OOT_MODULE Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (Q35 + ICH9, 2009), BIOS unknown 02/02/2022 RIP: 0010:find_first_extent_item+0x26/0x1f0 [btrfs] Call Trace: <TASK> scrub_find_fill_first_stripe+0x13d/0x3b0 [btrfs] scrub_simple_mirror+0x175/0x260 [btrfs] scrub_stripe+0x5d4/0x6c0 [btrfs] scrub_chunk+0xbb/0x170 [btrfs] scrub_enumerate_chunks+0x2f4/0x5f0 [btrfs] btrfs_scrub_dev+0x240/0x600 [btrfs] btrfs_ioctl+0x1dc8/0x2fa0 [btrfs] ? do_sys_openat2+0xa5/0xf0 __x64_sys_ioctl+0x97/0xc0 do_syscall_64+0x4f/0x120 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e </TASK>

[CAUSE] The reproducer is using a corrupted image where extent tree root is corrupted, thus forcing to use "rescue=all,ro" mount option to mount the image.

Then it triggered a scrub, but since scrub relies on extent tree to find where the data/metadata extents are, scrub_find_fill_first_stripe() relies on an non-empty extent root.

But unfortunately scrub_find_fill_first_stripe() doesn't really expect an NULL pointer for extent root, it use extent_root to grab fs_info and triggered a NULL pointer dereference.

[FIX] Add an extra check for a valid extent root at the beginning of scrub_find_fill_first_stripe().

The new error path is introduced by 42437a6386ff ("btrfs: introduce mount option rescue=ignorebadroots"), but that's pretty old, and later commit b979547513ff ("btrfs: scrub: introduce helper to find and fill sector info for a scrub_stripe") changed how we do scrub.

So for kernels older than 6.6, the fix will need manual backport.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.191, 6.6.72, 6.12.10, 6.13
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.12.10-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-21658

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-60.63
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1029.31
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1030.32
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1025.29
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1026.26
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1029.34
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1012.14
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1028.32

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-21658

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-rt SLE Micro 5.4, SLE Micro 5.3 5.14.21-150400.15.145.1
  • kernel-source-rt SLE Micro 5.4, SLE Micro 5.3 5.14.21-150400.15.145.1
  • kernel-64kb SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-ESPOS 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1
  • kernel-syms SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1
  • kernel-source SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1
  • kernel-default SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.4 +5 more 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1
  • kernel-obs-build SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE High Performance Computing 15 SP4-LTSS +1 more 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1
  • kernel-default-base SLES for SAP 15 SP4, SLES 15 SP4-LTSS, SLE Micro 5.4 +3 more 5.14.21-150400.24.194.1.150400.24.98.3

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:1131-1SUSE-SU-2026:0617-1SUSE-SU-2026:0496-1SUSE-SU-2026:0474-1SUSE-SU-2025:02923-1SUSE-SU-2025:02538-1

  • kernel Azure Linux 3.0 6.6.76.1-1

azure linux advisories AZL-55907

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

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-2025-21658 updated cvss 5.5

kernel: btrfs: avoid NULL pointer dereference if no valid extent tree

  • 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: 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 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

0.20% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 10% 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.