Bug 2516379 (CVE-2026-72185) - CVE-2026-72185 kernel: ntfs: fix WARN_ON for resident attribute in ntfs_map_runlist_nolock()
Summary: CVE-2026-72185 kernel: ntfs: fix WARN_ON for resident attribute in ntfs_map_r...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-72185
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability-draft
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-08-15 06:09 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-09-03 06:19 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:09:25 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ntfs: fix WARN_ON for resident attribute in ntfs_map_runlist_nolock()

When ntfs_map_runlist_nolock() needs to look up the attribute extent
containing a target VCN (ctx_needs_reset == true), it calls
ntfs_attr_lookup() and then expects the result to be a non-resident
attribute, since only non-resident attributes have a mapping pairs
array to decompress.

A crafted NTFS image can place a resident attribute where a non-resident
one is expected, causing ntfs_attr_lookup() to succeed but return a
resident attribute record.  Previously this was caught only by a
WARN_ON(), which does not stop execution.  The code then falls through to
read a->data.non_resident.highest_vcn from what is actually a resident
attribute, accessing the wrong union member and corrupting the VCN range
check.

The caller path triggering this warning during mount is:

  ntfs_map_runlist_nolock
  ntfs_empty_logfile
  load_system_files
  ntfs_fill_super

In this path ctx is NULL, so ntfs_map_runlist_nolock() allocates a
temporary search context internally and sets ctx_needs_reset = true.
The existing resident-attribute guard in the ctx != NULL branch already
returns -EIO silently for the same condition; make the ctx_needs_reset
path consistent by replacing the WARN_ON() with the same -EIO error
return.

This causes the crafted image to be rejected with a mount error instead
of triggering a kernel warning.


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