CVE-2023-54067

btrfs: fix race when deleting free space root from the dirty cow roots list

State
Published
Severity
7.8 High
Published
Dec 24, 2025
Updated
Aug 5, 2026
Reserved
Dec 24, 2025

Read the record on cve.org

Description

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

btrfs: fix race when deleting free space root from the dirty cow roots list

When deleting the free space tree we are deleting the free space root from the list fs_info->dirty_cowonly_roots without taking the lock that protects it, which is struct btrfs_fs_info::trans_lock. This unsynchronized list manipulation may cause chaos if there's another concurrent manipulation of this list, such as when adding a root to it with ctree.c:add_root_to_dirty_list().

This can result in all sorts of weird failures caused by a race, such as the following crash:

[337571.278245] general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdead000000000108: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP PTI [337571.278933] CPU: 1 PID: 115447 Comm: btrfs Tainted: G W 6.4.0-rc6-btrfs-next-134+ #1 [337571.279153] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS rel-1.14.0-0-g155821a1990b-prebuilt.qemu.org 04/01/2014 [337571.279572] RIP: 0010:commit_cowonly_roots+0x11f/0x250 [btrfs] [337571.279928] Code: 85 38 06 00 (...) [337571.280363] RSP: 0018:ffff9f63446efba0 EFLAGS: 00010206 [337571.280582] RAX: ffff942d98ec2638 RBX: ffff9430b82b4c30 RCX: 0000000449e1c000 [337571.280798] RDX: dead000000000100 RSI: ffff9430021e4900 RDI: 0000000000036070 [337571.281015] RBP: ffff942d98ec2000 R08: ffff942d98ec2000 R09: 000000000000015b [337571.281254] R10: 0000000000000009 R11: 0000000000000001 R12: ffff942fe8fbf600 [337571.281476] R13: ffff942dabe23040 R14: ffff942dabe20800 R15: ffff942d92cf3b48 [337571.281723] FS: 00007f478adb7340(0000) GS:ffff94349fa40000(0000) knlGS:0000000000000000 [337571.281950] CS: 0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033 [337571.282184] CR2: 00007f478ab9a3d5 CR3: 000000001e02c001 CR4: 0000000000370ee0 [337571.282416] DR0: 0000000000000000 DR1: 0000000000000000 DR2: 0000000000000000 [337571.282647] DR3: 0000000000000000 DR6: 00000000fffe0ff0 DR7: 0000000000000400 [337571.282874] Call Trace: [337571.283101] <TASK> [337571.283327] ? __die_body+0x1b/0x60 [337571.283570] ? die_addr+0x39/0x60 [337571.283796] ? exc_general_protection+0x22e/0x430 [337571.284022] ? asm_exc_general_protection+0x22/0x30 [337571.284251] ? commit_cowonly_roots+0x11f/0x250 [btrfs] [337571.284531] btrfs_commit_transaction+0x42e/0xf90 [btrfs] [337571.284803] ? _raw_spin_unlock+0x15/0x30 [337571.285031] ? release_extent_buffer+0x103/0x130 [btrfs] [337571.285305] reset_balance_state+0x152/0x1b0 [btrfs] [337571.285578] btrfs_balance+0xa50/0x11e0 [btrfs] [337571.285864] ? __kmem_cache_alloc_node+0x14a/0x410 [337571.286086] btrfs_ioctl+0x249a/0x3320 [btrfs] [337571.286358] ? mod_objcg_state+0xd2/0x360 [337571.286577] ? refill_obj_stock+0xb0/0x160 [337571.286798] ? seq_release+0x25/0x30 [337571.287016] ? __rseq_handle_notify_resume+0x3ba/0x4b0 [337571.287235] ? percpu_counter_add_batch+0x2e/0xa0 [337571.287455] ? __x64_sys_ioctl+0x88/0xc0 [337571.287675] __x64_sys_ioctl+0x88/0xc0 [337571.287901] do_syscall_64+0x38/0x90 [337571.288126] entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x72/0xdc [337571.288352] RIP: 0033:0x7f478aaffe9b

So fix this by locking struct btrfs_fs_info::trans_lock before deleting the free space root from that list.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.17.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HLinux

Weaknesses

The record names no weakness.

Affected Products

ProductVersions
LinuxLinux
  • a5ed91828518ab076209266c2bc510adabd078df to before 6f1c81886b0b56cb88b311e5d2f203625474d892Affected
  • a5ed91828518ab076209266c2bc510adabd078df to before 8ce9139aea5e60a247bde5af804312f54975f443Affected
  • a5ed91828518ab076209266c2bc510adabd078df to before babebf023e661b90b1c78b2baa384fb03a226879Affected
LinuxLinux
  • 4.5Affected
  • before 4.5Not affected
  • 6.1.39 through 6.1.*Not affected
  • 6.4.4 through 6.4.*Not affected
  • 6.5 and laterNot affected

References

Every record here comes from the CVE Program’s CVE List. © 1999–2026 The MITRE Corporation. CVE is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation. The records are reproduced under the CVE Program terms of use.