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Fencer Vulns
high 7.3

CVE-2025-37931 json

btrfs: adjust subpage bit start based on sectorsize

published 2025-05-20 17 mo ago modified 2026-08-05 3 mo ago also EUVD-2025-15910

cvss
7.3
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 12%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

btrfs: adjust subpage bit start based on sectorsize

When running machines with 64k page size and a 16k nodesize we started seeing tree log corruption in production. This turned out to be because we were not writing out dirty blocks sometimes, so this in fact affects all metadata writes.

When writing out a subpage EB we scan the subpage bitmap for a dirty range. If the range isn't dirty we do

bit_start++;

to move onto the next bit. The problem is the bitmap is based on the number of sectors that an EB has. So in this case, we have a 64k pagesize, 16k nodesize, but a 4k sectorsize. This means our bitmap is 4 bits for every node. With a 64k page size we end up with 4 nodes per page.

To make this easier this is how everything looks

[0 16k 32k 48k ] logical address [0 4 8 12 ] radix tree offset [ 64k page ] folio [ 16k eb ][ 16k eb ][ 16k eb ][ 16k eb ] extent buffers [ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ] bitmap

Now we use all of our addressing based on fs_info->sectorsize_bits, so as you can see the above our 16k eb->start turns into radix entry 4.

When we find a dirty range for our eb, we correctly do bit_start += sectors_per_node, because if we start at bit 0, the next bit for the next eb is 4, to correspond to eb->start 16k.

However if our range is clean, we will do bit_start++, which will now put us offset from our radix tree entries.

In our case, assume that the first time we check the bitmap the block is not dirty, we increment bit_start so now it == 1, and then we loop around and check again. This time it is dirty, and we go to find that start using the following equation

start = folio_start + bit_start * fs_info->sectorsize;

so in the case above, eb->start 0 is now dirty, and we calculate start as

0 + 1 * fs_info->sectorsize = 4096 4096 >> 12 = 1

Now we're looking up the radix tree for 1, and we won't find an eb. What's worse is now we're using bit_start == 1, so we do bit_start += sectors_per_node, which is now 5. If that eb is dirty we will run into the same thing, we will look at an offset that is not populated in the radix tree, and now we're skipping the writeout of dirty extent buffers.

The best fix for this is to not use sectorsize_bits to address nodes, but that's a larger change. Since this is a fs corruption problem fix it simply by always using sectors_per_node to increment the start bit.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 6.1.151, 6.6.105, 6.12.28, 6.14.6, 6.15
  • Siemens SIMATIC CN 4100 V5.0
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.153-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.12.29-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-37931

  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-100.100
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1046.49
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1047.50
  • linux-gke Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1043.48
  • linux-ibm Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1044.44
  • linux-azure Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1046.52
  • linux-gkeop Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1030.33
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1047.51

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-37931

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-coco SLE Module for Confidential Computing Technical Preview 15 SP6 6.4.0-15061.28.coco15sp6.1
  • kernel-syms-coco SLE Module for Confidential Computing Technical Preview 15 SP6 6.4.0-15061.28.coco15sp6.1
  • kernel-coco_debug SLE Module for Confidential Computing Technical Preview 15 SP6 6.4.0-15061.28.coco15sp6.1
  • kernel-source-coco SLE Module for Confidential Computing Technical Preview 15 SP6 6.4.0-15061.28.coco15sp6.1
  • kernel-rt Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.8.1
  • kernel-syms-rt Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.8.1
  • kernel-source-rt Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.8.1
  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.6.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:02923-1SUSE-SU-2025:02333-1SUSE-SU-2025:02307-1SUSE-SU-2025:02254-1SUSE-SU-2025:02000-1SUSE-SU-2025:20413-1

  • kernel Azure Linux 3.0 6.6.112.1-1

azure linux advisories AZL-62654

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-2025-37931 updated

kernel: btrfs: adjust subpage bit start based on sectorsize

  • 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 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

0.22% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 12% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/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

Affected products

  • Linux Linux
  • Siemens SIMATIC CN 4100

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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