Description

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

fs/erofs/fileio: call erofs_onlinefolio_split() after bio_add_folio()

If bio_add_folio() fails (because it is full),
erofs_fileio_scan_folio() needs to submit the I/O request via
erofs_fileio_rq_submit() and allocate a new I/O request with an empty
`struct bio`. Then it retries the bio_add_folio() call.

However, at this point, erofs_onlinefolio_split() has already been
called which increments `folio->private`; the retry will call
erofs_onlinefolio_split() again, but there will never be a matching
erofs_onlinefolio_end() call. This leaves the folio locked forever
and all waiters will be stuck in folio_wait_bit_common().

This bug has been added by commit ce63cb62d794 ("erofs: support
unencoded inodes for fileio"), but was practically unreachable because
there was room for 256 folios in the `struct bio` - until commit
9f74ae8c9ac9 ("erofs: shorten bvecs[] for file-backed mounts") which
reduced the array capacity to 16 folios.

It was now trivial to trigger the bug by manually invoking readahead
from userspace, e.g.:

posix_fadvise(fd, 0, st.st_size, POSIX_FADV_WILLNEED);

This should be fixed by invoking erofs_onlinefolio_split() only after
bio_add_folio() has succeeded. This is safe: asynchronous completions
invoking erofs_onlinefolio_end() will not unlock the folio because
erofs_fileio_scan_folio() is still holding a reference to be released
by erofs_onlinefolio_end() at the end.

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2025-37999

Affected Products

Vendor: Linux

Product: Linux

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.02% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 4.25% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-06-09 (when was this score calculated)

References

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-37999
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/61e0fc3312309867e5a3495329dad0286d2a5703
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c26076197df348c84cc23e5962d61902e072a0f5
https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bbfe756dc3062c1e934f06e5ba39c239aa953b92

Timeline