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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.5

CVE-2026-46169 json

hfsplus: fix uninit-value by validating catalog record size

published 2026-05-28 5 mo ago modified 2026-06-19 4 mo ago also EUVD-2026-32796

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 2%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

hfsplus: fix uninit-value by validating catalog record size

Syzbot reported a KMSAN uninit-value issue in hfsplus_strcasecmp(). The root cause is that hfs_brec_read() doesn't validate that the on-disk record size matches the expected size for the record type being read.

When mounting a corrupted filesystem, hfs_brec_read() may read less data than expected. For example, when reading a catalog thread record, the debug output showed:

HFSPLUS_BREC_READ: rec_len=520, fd->entrylength=26 HFSPLUS_BREC_READ: WARNING - entrylength (26) < rec_len (520) - PARTIAL READ!

hfs_brec_read() only validates that entrylength is not greater than the buffer size, but doesn't check if it's less than expected. It successfully reads 26 bytes into a 520-byte structure and returns success, leaving 494 bytes uninitialized.

This uninitialized data in tmp.thread.nodeName then gets copied by hfsplus_cat_build_key_uni() and used by hfsplus_strcasecmp(), triggering the KMSAN warning when the uninitialized bytes are used as array indices in case_fold().

Fix by introducing hfsplus_brec_read_cat() wrapper that: 1. Calls hfs_brec_read() to read the data 2. Validates the record size based on the type field: - Fixed size for folder and file records - Variable size for thread records (depends on string length) 3. Returns -EIO if size doesn't match expected

For thread records, check against HFSPLUS_MIN_THREAD_SZ before reading nodeName.length to avoid reading uninitialized data at call sites that don't zero-initialize the entry structure.

Also initialize the tmp variable in hfsplus_find_cat() as defensive programming to ensure no uninitialized data even if validation is bypassed.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.10.259, 5.15.210, 6.1.176, 6.6.140, 6.12.88, 6.18.30, 7.0.7, 7.1
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.176-1
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.88-1
  • linux Debian 14 7.0.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-46169

  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-198.208
  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-136.136
  • linux Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-28.28
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1117.124
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1061.64
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 7.0.0-1009.9
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1118.128
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1064.72

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-46169

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-syms SLES LTSS Extended Security 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5-LTSS 4.12.14-122.317.1
  • kernel-source SLES LTSS Extended Security 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5-LTSS 4.12.14-122.317.1
  • kernel-default SLES LTSS Extended Security 12 SP5, SLES 12 SP5-LTSS, SLE Live Patching 12 SP5 4.12.14-122.317.1
  • kgraft-patch-SLE12-SP5_Update_84 SLE Live Patching 12 SP5 1-8.7.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:2450-1

  • kernel-source openSUSE Tumbleweed 7.0.11-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:10954-1

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-2026-46169 updated cvss 4.4

kernel: hfsplus: fix uninit-value by validating catalog record size

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

0.13% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 2% 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

Weakness
  • CWE-908 Use of Uninitialized Resource
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.