CVE-2023-52933

Squashfs: fix handling and sanity checking of xattr_ids count

State
Published
Severity
Not scored
Published
Mar 27, 2025
Updated
May 23, 2026
Reserved
Aug 21, 2024

Read the record on cve.org

Description

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

Squashfs: fix handling and sanity checking of xattr_ids count

A Sysbot [1] corrupted filesystem exposes two flaws in the handling and sanity checking of the xattr_ids count in the filesystem. Both of these flaws cause computation overflow due to incorrect typing.

In the corrupted filesystem the xattr_ids value is 4294967071, which stored in a signed variable becomes the negative number -225.

Flaw 1 (64-bit systems only):

The signed integer xattr_ids variable causes sign extension.

This causes variable overflow in the SQUASHFS_XATTR_*(A) macros. The variable is first multiplied by sizeof(struct squashfs_xattr_id) where the type of the sizeof operator is "unsigned long".

On a 64-bit system this is 64-bits in size, and causes the negative number to be sign extended and widened to 64-bits and then become unsigned. This produces the very large number 18446744073709548016 or 2^64 - 3600. This number when rounded up by SQUASHFS_METADATA_SIZE - 1 (8191 bytes) and divided by SQUASHFS_METADATA_SIZE overflows and produces a length of 0 (stored in len).

Flaw 2 (32-bit systems only):

On a 32-bit system the integer variable is not widened by the unsigned long type of the sizeof operator (32-bits), and the signedness of the variable has no effect due it always being treated as unsigned.

The above corrupted xattr_ids value of 4294967071, when multiplied overflows and produces the number 4294963696 or 2^32 - 3400. This number when rounded up by SQUASHFS_METADATA_SIZE - 1 (8191 bytes) and divided by SQUASHFS_METADATA_SIZE overflows again and produces a length of 0.

The effect of the 0 length computation:

In conjunction with the corrupted xattr_ids field, the filesystem also has a corrupted xattr_table_start value, where it matches the end of filesystem value of 850.

This causes the following sanity check code to fail because the incorrectly computed len of 0 matches the incorrect size of the table reported by the superblock (0 bytes).

len = SQUASHFS_XATTR_BLOCK_BYTES(*xattr_ids); indexes = SQUASHFS_XATTR_BLOCKS(*xattr_ids);

/* * The computed size of the index table (len bytes) should exactly * match the table start and end points */ start = table_start + sizeof(*id_table); end = msblk->bytes_used;

if (len != (end - start)) return ERR_PTR(-EINVAL);

Changing the xattr_ids variable to be "usigned int" fixes the flaw on a 64-bit system. This relies on the fact the computation is widened by the unsigned long type of the sizeof operator.

Casting the variable to u64 in the above macro fixes this flaw on a 32-bit system.

It also means 64-bit systems do not implicitly rely on the type of the sizeof operator to widen the computation.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/000000000000cd44f005f1a0f17f@google.com/

Scores

The record has no CVSS score.

Weaknesses

The record names no weakness.

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • ff49cace7b8cf00d27665f7536a863d406963d06 to before 7fe583c9bec10cd4b76231c51b37f3e4ca646e01Affected
  • a8717b34003f4f7353b23826617ad872f85d85d8 to before b38c3e9e0adc01956cc3e5a52e4d3f92f79d88e2Affected
  • 3654a0ed0bdc6d70502bfc7c9fec9f1e243dfcad to before 1369322c1de52c7b9b988b95c9903110a4566778Affected
  • bddcce15cd1fb9675ddd46a76d8fe2d0a571313b to before 5c4d4a83bf1a862d80c1efff1c6e3ce33b501e2eAffected
  • 506220d2ba21791314af569211ffd8870b8208fa to before 997bed0f3cde78a3e639d624985bf4a95cf767e6Affected
  • 506220d2ba21791314af569211ffd8870b8208fa to before a7da7d01ac5ce9b369a1ac70e1197999cc6c9686Affected
  • 506220d2ba21791314af569211ffd8870b8208fa to before f65c4bbbd682b0877b669828b4e033b8d5d0a2dcAffected
  • 91d4f4d0d7bcd6abd9f9288ff40f4edc716f3d4bAffected
  • eca93bf20f70e0f78c8c28720951942f61a49117Affected
  • 4.14.222 to before 4.14.306Affected
  • 4.19.176 to before 4.19.273Affected
  • 5.4.98 to before 5.4.232Affected
  • 5.10.16 to before 5.10.168Affected
  • 4.4.258 to before 4.5Affected
  • 4.9.258 to before 4.10Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 5.11Affected
  • before 5.11Not affected
  • 4.14.306 through 4.14.*Not affected
  • 4.19.273 through 4.19.*Not affected
  • 5.4.232 through 5.4.*Not affected
  • 5.10.168 through 5.10.*Not affected
  • 5.15.93 through 5.15.*Not affected
  • 6.1.11 through 6.1.*Not affected
  • 6.2 and laterNot affected

References

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