CVE-2025-38691
MediumCVSS 5.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk7th percentile - higher than 7% of all known CVEs
Summary
In the Linux kernel pNFS, on the third attempt to encode extents, ext_tree_prepare_commit() reallocates a larger buffer, but the layoutupdate_pages page array is initialized only after the retry loop. ext_tree_free_commitdata() called on every iteration dereferences uninitialized pointers. There is also no limit on maximum buffer size, which can produce a layoutcommit too large for the server.
Risk Assessment
Dereferencing uninitialized pointers can cause an NFS client kernel panic, and oversized layoutcommit requests can disrupt communication with the server.
Recommendation
Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix that initializes the page array before the loop and limits the maximum buffer size.
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Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: pNFS: Fix uninited ptr deref in block/scsi layout The error occurs on the third attempt to encode extents. When function ext_tree_prepare_commit() reallocates a larger buffer to retry encoding extents, the "layoutupdate_pages" page array is initialized only after the retry loop. But ext_tree_free_commitdata() is called on every iteration and tries to put pages in the array, thus dereferencing uninitialized pointers. An additional problem is that there is no limit on the maximum possible buffer_size. When there are too many extents, the client may create a layoutcommit that is larger than the maximum possible RPC size accepted by the server. During testing, we observed two typical scenarios. First, one memory page for extents is enough when we work with small files, append data to the end of the file, or preallocate extents before writing. But when we fill a new large file without preallocating, the number of extents can be huge, and counting the number of written extents in ext_tree_encode_commit() does not help much. Since this number increases even more between unlocking and locking of ext_tree, the reallocated buffer may not be large enough again and again.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS