CVE-2025-37904

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

btrfs: fix the inode leak in btrfs_iget()

[BUG] There is a bug report that a syzbot reproducer can lead to the following busy inode at unmount time:

BTRFS info (device loop1): last unmount of filesystem 1680000e-3c1e-4c46-84b6-56bd3909af50 VFS: Busy inodes after unmount of loop1 (btrfs) ————[ cut here ]———— kernel BUG at fs/super.c:650! Oops: invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 48168 Comm: syz-executor Not tainted 6.15.0-rc2-00471-g119009db2674 #2 PREEMPT(full) Hardware name: QEMU Ubuntu 24.04 PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.3-debian-1.16.3-2 04/01/2014 RIP: 0010:generic_shutdown_super+0x2e9/0x390 fs/super.c:650 Call Trace: kill_anon_super+0x3a/0x60 fs/super.c:1237 btrfs_kill_super+0x3b/0x50 fs/btrfs/super.c:2099 deactivate_locked_super+0xbe/0x1a0 fs/super.c:473 deactivate_super fs/super.c:506 [inline] deactivate_super+0xe2/0x100 fs/super.c:502 cleanup_mnt+0x21f/0x440 fs/namespace.c:1435 task_work_run+0x14d/0x240 kernel/task_work.c:227 resume_user_mode_work include/linux/resume_user_mode.h:50 [inline] exit_to_user_mode_loop kernel/entry/common.c:114 [inline] exit_to_user_mode_prepare include/linux/entry-common.h:329 [inline] __syscall_exit_to_user_mode_work kernel/entry/common.c:207 [inline] syscall_exit_to_user_mode+0x269/0x290 kernel/entry/common.c:218 do_syscall_64+0xd4/0x250 arch/x86/entry/syscall_64.c:100 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f

[CAUSE] When btrfs_alloc_path() failed, btrfs_iget() directly returned without releasing the inode already allocated by btrfs_iget_locked().

This results the above busy inode and trigger the kernel BUG.

[FIX] Fix it by calling iget_failed() if btrfs_alloc_path() failed.

If we hit error inside btrfs_read_locked_inode(), it will properly call iget_failed(), so nothing to worry about.

Although the iget_failed() cleanup inside btrfs_read_locked_inode() is a break of the normal error handling scheme, lets fix the obvious bug and backport first, then rework the error handling later.

Weakness

The product does not sufficiently track and release allocated memory after it has been used, making the memory unavailable for reallocation and reuse.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Choose a language or tool that provides automatic memory management, or makes manual memory management less error-prone.
• For example, glibc in Linux provides protection against free of invalid pointers.
• When using Xcode to target OS X or iOS, enable automatic reference counting (ARC) [REF-391].
• To help correctly and consistently manage memory when programming in C++, consider using a smart pointer class such as std::auto_ptr (defined by ISO/IEC ISO/IEC 14882:2003), std::shared_ptr and std::unique_ptr (specified by an upcoming revision of the C++ standard, informally referred to as C++ 1x), or equivalent solutions such as Boost.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/30a339bece3a44ab0a821477139e84fb86af9761
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/48c1d1bb525b1c44b8bdc8e7ec5629cb6c2b9fc4