CVE-2025-40119 json
ext4: fix potential null deref in ext4_mb_init()
published 2025-11-12 11 mo ago modified 2026-10-19 20 d ago also EUVD-2025-124964
- cvss
- —
- not scored
- cisa kev
- Not listed
- not in CISA's catalog
- epss
- 0.2%
- EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 11%
- public exploits
- 0
- none known
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ext4: fix potential null deref in ext4_mb_init()
In ext4_mb_init(), ext4_mb_avg_fragment_size_destroy() may be called when sbi->s_mb_avg_fragment_size remains uninitialized (e.g., if groupinfo slab cache allocation fails). Since ext4_mb_avg_fragment_size_destroy() lacks null pointer checking, this leads to a null pointer dereference.
================================================================== EXT4-fs: no memory for groupinfo slab cache BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000000 PGD 0 P4D 0 Oops: Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP PTI CPU:2 UID: 0 PID: 87 Comm:mount Not tainted 6.17.0-rc2 #1134 PREEMPT(none) RIP: 0010:_raw_spin_lock_irqsave+0x1b/0x40 Call Trace: <TASK> xa_destroy+0x61/0x130 ext4_mb_init+0x483/0x540 __ext4_fill_super+0x116d/0x17b0 ext4_fill_super+0xd3/0x280 get_tree_bdev_flags+0x132/0x1d0 vfs_get_tree+0x29/0xd0 do_new_mount+0x197/0x300 __x64_sys_mount+0x116/0x150 do_syscall_64+0x50/0x1c0 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e ==================================================================
Therefore, add necessary null check to ext4_mb_avg_fragment_size_destroy() to prevent this issue. The same fix is also applied to ext4_mb_largest_free_orders_destroy().
Patch / fix
- Linux Linux 6.17.3, 6.18
- linux Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-14.14
- linux-aws Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1007.7
- linux-gcp Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1007.7
- linux-azure Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1008.8
- linux-raspi Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1008.8
- linux-riscv Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-14.14.1
- linux-oracle Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1007.7
- linux-aws-6.17 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.17.0-1007.7~24.04.1
ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-40119
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-2025-40119 updated cvss 4.7
kernel: ext4: fix potential null deref in ext4_mb_init()
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 moreaffected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
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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 kernelnot 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
0.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 11% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).
Affected products
- Linux Linux
Classification
- Technology feeds
References
Sources
- CVE List CVE-2025-40119
- NVD CVE-2025-40119
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