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CVE-2025-40190 Not scored

ext4: guard against EA inode refcount underflow in xattr update

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: guard against EA inode refcount underflow in xattr update syzkaller found a path where ext4_xattr_inode_update_ref() reads an EA inode refcount that is already <= 0 and then applies ref_change (often -1). That lets the refcount underflow and we proceed with a bogus value, triggering errors like: EXT4-fs error: EA inode <n> ref underflow: ref_count=-1 ref_change=-1 EXT4-fs warning: ea_inode dec ref err=-117 Make the invariant explicit: if the current refcount is non-positive, treat this as on-disk corruption, emit ext4_error_inode(), and fail the operation with -EFSCORRUPTED instead of updating the refcount. Delete the WARN_ONCE() as negative refcounts are now impossible; keep error reporting in ext4_error_inode(). This prevents the underflow and the follow-on orphan/cleanup churn.

Exploit probability 0.2%
Published November 12, 2025
Required by Not available
Last source change July 15, 2026

02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE

Affected packages

Linux Kernel
Unknown Unknown

1946 explicit affected versions

03 / CONNECTIONS

Connected vulnerabilities

related OPENSUSE-SU-2026:20145-1
related SUSE-SU-2026:0278-1
related SUSE-SU-2026:0281-1
related SUSE-SU-2026:0315-1
related SUSE-SU-2026:20207-1
related SUSE-SU-2026:20220-1
related SUSE-SU-2026:20228-1
related SUSE-SU-2026:20477-1
related SUSE-SU-2026:20498-1
related SUSE-SU-2026:20845-1
related SUSE-SU-2026:20876-1

04 / EVIDENCE

Source records

Open Source Vulnerabilities CVE-2025-40190

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: guard against EA inode refcount underflow in xattr update syzkaller found a path where ext4_xattr_inode_update_ref() reads an EA inode refcount that is already <= 0 and then applies ref_change (often -1). That lets the refcount underflow and we proceed with a bogus value, triggering errors like: EXT4-fs error: EA inode <n> ref underflow: ref_count=-1 ref_change=-1 EXT4-fs warning: ea_inode dec ref err=-117 Make the invariant explicit: if the current refcount is non-positive, treat this as on-disk corruption, emit ext4_error_inode(), and fail the operation with -EFSCORRUPTED instead of updating the refcount. Delete the WARN_ONCE() as negative refcounts are now impossible; keep error reporting in ext4_error_inode(). This prevents the underflow and the follow-on orphan/cleanup churn.

View original source

05 / REFERENCES

Further evidence