Bug 2424976 (CVE-2023-54023) - CVE-2023-54023 kernel: btrfs: fix race between balance and cancel/pause
Summary: CVE-2023-54023 kernel: btrfs: fix race between balance and cancel/pause
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2023-54023
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
low
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2025-12-24 12:05 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2025-12-25 11:39 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2025-12-24 12:05:18 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

btrfs: fix race between balance and cancel/pause

Syzbot reported a panic that looks like this:

  assertion failed: fs_info->exclusive_operation == BTRFS_EXCLOP_BALANCE_PAUSED, in fs/btrfs/ioctl.c:465
  ------------[ cut here ]------------
  kernel BUG at fs/btrfs/messages.c:259!
  RIP: 0010:btrfs_assertfail+0x2c/0x30 fs/btrfs/messages.c:259
  Call Trace:
   <TASK>
   btrfs_exclop_balance fs/btrfs/ioctl.c:465 [inline]
   btrfs_ioctl_balance fs/btrfs/ioctl.c:3564 [inline]
   btrfs_ioctl+0x531e/0x5b30 fs/btrfs/ioctl.c:4632
   vfs_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:51 [inline]
   __do_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:870 [inline]
   __se_sys_ioctl fs/ioctl.c:856 [inline]
   __x64_sys_ioctl+0x197/0x210 fs/ioctl.c:856
   do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:50 [inline]
   do_syscall_64+0x39/0xb0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:80
   entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd

The reproducer is running a balance and a cancel or pause in parallel.
The way balance finishes is a bit wonky, if we were paused we need to
save the balance_ctl in the fs_info, but clear it otherwise and cleanup.
However we rely on the return values being specific errors, or having a
cancel request or no pause request.  If balance completes and returns 0,
but we have a pause or cancel request we won't do the appropriate
cleanup, and then the next time we try to start a balance we'll trip
this ASSERT.

The error handling is just wrong here, we always want to clean up,
unless we got -ECANCELLED and we set the appropriate pause flag in the
exclusive op.  With this patch the reproducer ran for an hour without
tripping, previously it would trip in less than a few minutes.


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