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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2025-68358 json

btrfs: fix racy bitfield write in btrfs_clear_space_info_full()

published 2025-12-24 10 mo ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2025-205096

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 7%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

btrfs: fix racy bitfield write in btrfs_clear_space_info_full()

From the memory-barriers.txt document regarding memory barrier ordering guarantees:

(*) These guarantees do not apply to bitfields, because compilers often generate code to modify these using non-atomic read-modify-write sequences. Do not attempt to use bitfields to synchronize parallel algorithms.

(*) Even in cases where bitfields are protected by locks, all fields in a given bitfield must be protected by one lock. If two fields in a given bitfield are protected by different locks, the compiler's non-atomic read-modify-write sequences can cause an update to one field to corrupt the value of an adjacent field.

btrfs_space_info has a bitfield sharing an underlying word consisting of the fields full, chunk_alloc, and flush:

struct btrfs_space_info { struct btrfs_fs_info * fs_info; /* 0 8 */ struct btrfs_space_info * parent; /* 8 8 */ ... int clamp; /* 172 4 */ unsigned int full:1; /* 176: 0 4 */ unsigned int chunk_alloc:1; /* 176: 1 4 */ unsigned int flush:1; /* 176: 2 4 */ ...

Therefore, to be safe from parallel read-modify-writes losing a write to one of the bitfield members protected by a lock, all writes to all the bitfields must use the lock. They almost universally do, except for btrfs_clear_space_info_full() which iterates over the space_infos and writes out found->full = 0 without a lock.

Imagine that we have one thread completing a transaction in which we finished deleting a block_group and are thus calling btrfs_clear_space_info_full() while simultaneously the data reclaim ticket infrastructure is running do_async_reclaim_data_space():

T1 T2 btrfs_commit_transaction btrfs_clear_space_info_full data_sinfo->full = 0 READ: full:0, chunk_alloc:0, flush:1 do_async_reclaim_data_space(data_sinfo) spin_lock(&space_info->lock); if(list_empty(tickets)) space_info->flush = 0; READ: full: 0, chunk_alloc:0, flush:1 MOD/WRITE: full: 0, chunk_alloc:0, flush:0 spin_unlock(&space_info->lock); return; MOD/WRITE: full:0, chunk_alloc:0, flush:1

and now data_sinfo->flush is 1 but the reclaim worker has exited. This breaks the invariant that flush is 0 iff there is no work queued or running. Once this invariant is violated, future allocations that go into __reserve_bytes() will add tickets to space_info->tickets but will see space_info->flush is set to 1 and not queue the work. After this, they will block forever on the resulting ticket, as it is now impossible to kick the worker again.

I also confirmed by looking at the assembly of the affected kernel that it is doing RMW operations. For example, to set the flush (3rd) bit to 0, the assembly is: andb $0xfb,0x60(%rbx) and similarly for setting the full (1st) bit to 0: andb $0xfe,-0x20(%rax)

So I think this is really a bug on practical systems. I have observed a number of systems in this exact state, but am currently unable to reproduce it.

Rather than leaving this footgun lying around for the future, take advantage of the fact that there is room in the struct anyway, and that it is already quite large and simply change the three bitfield members to bools. This avoids writes to space_info->full having any effect on ---truncated---

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.15.201, 6.1.164, 6.6.124, 6.12.68, 6.17.13, 6.18.2, 6.19
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.164-1
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.69-1
  • linux Debian 14 6.17.13-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68358

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-186.196
  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-117.117
  • linux Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-19.19
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1112.119
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1055.58
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 25.10 6.17.0-1009.9
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1112.122
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1058.61

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-68358

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 Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.81.1
  • kernel-syms-rt Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.81.1
  • kernel-source-rt Real Time Module 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.7.81.1
  • kernel-64kb SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.87.3
  • kernel-syms SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.87.1
  • kernel-azure SLE Module for Public Cloud 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.87.3
  • kernel-source SLE Module for Development Tools 15 SP7, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 6.4.0-150700.53.87.3
  • kernel-default SLE Workstation Extension 15 SP7, SLE Module for Legacy 15 SP7, SLE Module for Basesystem 15 SP7 +2 more 6.4.0-150700.53.87.3

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:4940-1SUSE-SU-2026:4935-1SUSE-SU-2026:24473-1SUSE-SU-2026:24553-1SUSE-SU-2026:4892-1SUSE-SU-2026:24371-1

  • kernel-rt openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • dtb-aarch64 openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-64kb openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-syms openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-azure openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-obs-qa openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-source openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1
  • kernel-default openSUSE Leap 16.0 6.12.0-160000.38.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:21910-1openSUSE-SU-2026:10301-1openSUSE-SU-2026:10039-1

  • kernel Azure Linux 3.0 6.6.126.1-1

azure linux advisories AZL-73126

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-2025-68358 updated

kernel: btrfs: fix racy bitfield write in btrfs_clear_space_info_full()

  • 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

0.18% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 7% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
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

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

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