CVE-2025-40306

Technical Description

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

orangefs: fix xattr related buffer overflow...

Willy Tarreau <[email protected]> forwarded me a message from

Disclosure <[email protected]> with the following

warning:

> The helper `xattr_key()` uses the pointer variable in the loop condition

> rather than dereferencing it. As `key` is incremented, it remains non-NULL

> (until it runs into unmapped memory), so the loop does not terminate on

> valid C strings and will walk memory indefinitely, consuming CPU or hanging

> the thread.

I easily reproduced this with setfattr and getfattr, causing a kernel

oops, hung user processes and corrupted orangefs files. Disclosure

sent along a diff (not a patch) with a suggested fix, which I based

this patch on.

After xattr_key started working right, xfstest generic/069 exposed an

xattr related memory leak that lead to OOM. xattr_key returns

a hashed key. When adding xattrs to the orangefs xattr cache, orangefs

used hash_add, a kernel

Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories, patches, and mitigation guidance. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

References