CVE-2023-53618

Medium

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: btrfs: reject invalid reloc tree root keys with stack dump [BUG] Syzbot reported a crash that an ASSERT() got triggered inside prepare_to_merge(). That ASSERT() makes sure the reloc tree is properly pointed back by its subvolume tree. [CAUSE] After more debugging output, it turns out we had an invalid reloc tree: BTRFS error (device loop1): reloc tree mismatch, root 8 has no reloc root, expect reloc root key (-8, 132, 8) gen 17 Note the above root key is (TREE_RELOC_OBJECTID, ROOT_ITEM, QUOTA_TREE_OBJECTID), meaning it's a reloc tree for quota tree. But reloc trees can only exist for subvolumes, as for non-subvolume trees, we just COW the involved tree block, no need to create a reloc tree since those tree blocks won't be shared with other trees. Only subvolumes tree can share tree blocks with other trees (thus they have BTRFS_ROOT_SHAREABLE flag). Thus this new debug output proves my previous assumption that corrupted on-disk data can trigger that ASSERT(). [FIX] Besides the dedicated fix and the graceful exit, also let tree-checker to check such root keys, to make sure reloc trees can only exist for subvolumes.

SeverityMedium
CVSS5.5
Exploit probability—
ProductLinux Kernel
PublishedOct 7, 2025
First seenOct 7, 2025

How to fix

Update
  • linux linux_kernel5.3, 5.15.127, 6.1.46, 6.4.11 or later

Affected products

ProductAffected versionsFixed in
linux linux_kernel5.2.19 ≤ v < 5.3, 5.3.4 ≤ v < 5.15.127, 5.16 ≤ v < 6.1.46, 6.2 ≤ v < 6.4.11, 6.55.3, 5.15.127, 6.1.46, 6.4.11

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