Bug 2481996 (CVE-2026-45892) - CVE-2026-45892 kernel: ext4: drop extent cache after doing PARTIAL_VALID1 zeroout
Summary: CVE-2026-45892 kernel: ext4: drop extent cache after doing PARTIAL_VALID1 zer...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-45892
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-05-27 15:06 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-05-28 02:52 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-05-27 15:06:13 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ext4: drop extent cache after doing PARTIAL_VALID1 zeroout

When splitting an unwritten extent in the middle and converting it to
initialized in ext4_split_extent() with the EXT4_EXT_MAY_ZEROOUT and
EXT4_EXT_DATA_VALID2 flags set, it could leave a stale unwritten extent.

Assume we have an unwritten file and buffered write in the middle of it
without dioread_nolock enabled, it will allocate blocks as written
extent.

       0  A      B  N
       [UUUUUUUUUUUU] on-disk extent      U: unwritten extent
       [UUUUUUUUUUUU] extent status tree
       [--DDDDDDDD--]                     D: valid data
          |<-  ->| ----> this range needs to be initialized

ext4_split_extent() first try to split this extent at B with
EXT4_EXT_DATA_PARTIAL_VALID1 and EXT4_EXT_MAY_ZEROOUT flag set, but
ext4_split_extent_at() failed to split this extent due to temporary lack
of space. It zeroout B to N and leave the entire extent as unwritten.

       0  A      B  N
       [UUUUUUUUUUUU] on-disk extent
       [UUUUUUUUUUUU] extent status tree
       [--DDDDDDDDZZ]                     Z: zeroed data

ext4_split_extent() then try to split this extent at A with
EXT4_EXT_DATA_VALID2 flag set. This time, it split successfully and
leave an written extent from A to N.

       0  A      B  N
       [UUWWWWWWWWWW] on-disk extent      W: written extent
       [UUUUUUUUUUUU] extent status tree
       [--DDDDDDDDZZ]

Finally ext4_map_create_blocks() only insert extent A to B to the extent
status tree, and leave an stale unwritten extent in the status tree.

       0  A      B  N
       [UUWWWWWWWWWW] on-disk extent      W: written extent
       [UUWWWWWWWWUU] extent status tree
       [--DDDDDDDDZZ]

Fix this issue by always cached extent status entry after zeroing out
the second part.


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