CVE-2025-37785

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

ext4: fix OOB read when checking dotdot dir

Mounting a corrupted filesystem with directory which contains '.' dir entry with rec_len == block size results in out-of-bounds read (later on, when the corrupted directory is removed).

ext4emptydir() assumes every ext4 directory contains at least '.' and '..' as directory entries in the first data block. It first loads the '.' dir entry, performs sanity checks by calling ext4checkdirentry() and then uses its reclen member to compute the location of '..' dir entry (in ext4nextentry). It assumes the '..' dir entry fits into the same data block.

If the reclen of '.' is precisely one block (4KB), it slips through the sanity checks (it is considered the last directory entry in the data block) and leaves "struct ext4direntry2 *de" point exactly past the memory slot allocated to the data block. The following call to ext4checkdir_entry() on new value of de then dereferences this pointer which results in out-of-bounds mem access.

Fix this by extending _ext4checkdirentry() to check for '.' dir entries that reach the end of data block. Make sure to ignore the phony dir entries for checksum (by checking name_len for non-zero).

Note: This is reported by KASAN as use-after-free in case another structure was recently freed from the slot past the bound, but it is really an OOB read.

This issue was found by syzkaller tool.

Call Trace: [ 38.594108] BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in ext4checkdirentry+0x67e/0x710 [ 38.594649] Read of size 2 at addr ffff88802b41a004 by task syz-executor/5375 [ 38.595158] [ 38.595288] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 5375 Comm: syz-executor Not tainted 6.14.0-rc7 #1 [ 38.595298] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.16.3-0-ga6ed6b701f0a-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 [ 38.595304] Call Trace: [ 38.595308] <TASK> [ 38.595311] dumpstacklvl+0xa7/0xd0 [ 38.595325] printaddressdescription.constprop.0+0x2c/0x3f0 [ 38.595339] ? _ext4checkdirentry+0x67e/0x710 [ 38.595349] printreport+0xaa/0x250 [ 38.595359] ? _ext4checkdirentry+0x67e/0x710 [ 38.595368] ? kasanaddrtoslab+0x9/0x90 [ 38.595378] kasanreport+0xab/0xe0 [ 38.595389] ? _ext4checkdirentry+0x67e/0x710 [ 38.595400] _ext4checkdirentry+0x67e/0x710 [ 38.595410] ext4emptydir+0x465/0x990 [ 38.595421] ? _pfxext4emptydir+0x10/0x10 [ 38.595432] ext4rmdir.part.0+0x29a/0xd10 [ 38.595441] ? _dquotinitialize+0x2a7/0xbf0 [ 38.595455] ? _pfxext4rmdir.part.0+0x10/0x10 [ 38.595464] ? _pfxdquotinitialize+0x10/0x10 [ 38.595478] ? downwrite+0xdb/0x140 [ 38.595487] ? _pfxdownwrite+0x10/0x10 [ 38.595497] ext4rmdir+0xee/0x140 [ 38.595506] vfsrmdir+0x209/0x670 [ 38.595517] ? lookuponeqstrexcl+0x3b/0x190 [ 38.595529] dormdir+0x363/0x3c0 [ 38.595537] ? _pfxdormdir+0x10/0x10 [ 38.595544] ? strncpyfromuser+0x1ff/0x2e0 [ 38.595561] _x64sysunlinkat+0xf0/0x130 [ 38.595570] dosyscall64+0x5b/0x180 [ 38.595583] entrySYSCALL64after_hwframe+0x76/0x7e