CVE-2025-21654

NameCVE-2025-21654
DescriptionIn the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ovl: support encoding fid from inode with no alias Dmitry Safonov reported that a WARN_ON() assertion can be trigered by userspace when calling inotify_show_fdinfo() for an overlayfs watched inode, whose dentry aliases were discarded with drop_caches. The WARN_ON() assertion in inotify_show_fdinfo() was removed, because it is possible for encoding file handle to fail for other reason, but the impact of failing to encode an overlayfs file handle goes beyond this assertion. As shown in the LTP test case mentioned in the link below, failure to encode an overlayfs file handle from a non-aliased inode also leads to failure to report an fid with FAN_DELETE_SELF fanotify events. As Dmitry notes in his analyzis of the problem, ovl_encode_fh() fails if it cannot find an alias for the inode, but this failure can be fixed. ovl_encode_fh() seldom uses the alias and in the case of non-decodable file handles, as is often the case with fanotify fid info, ovl_encode_fh() never needs to use the alias to encode a file handle. Defer finding an alias until it is actually needed so ovl_encode_fh() will not fail in the common case of FAN_DELETE_SELF fanotify events.
SourceCVE (at NVD; CERT, LWN, oss-sec, fulldisc, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE bugzilla/CVE, GitHub advisories/code/issues, web search, more)

Vulnerable and fixed packages

The table below lists information on source packages.

Source PackageReleaseVersionStatus
linux (PTS)bullseye5.10.223-1fixed
bullseye (security)5.10.226-1fixed
bookworm6.1.123-1fixed
bookworm (security)6.1.128-1fixed
trixie6.12.12-1fixed
sid6.12.15-1fixed

The information below is based on the following data on fixed versions.

PackageTypeReleaseFixed VersionUrgencyOriginDebian Bugs
linuxsourcebullseye(not affected)
linuxsourcebookworm(not affected)
linuxsource(unstable)6.12.10-1

Notes

[bookworm] - linux <not-affected> (Vulnerable code not present)
[bullseye] - linux <not-affected> (Vulnerable code not present)
https://git.kernel.org/linus/c45beebfde34aa71afbc48b2c54cdda623515037 (6.13-rc7)

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