CVE-2026-45942: Software Security Vulnerability Vulnerability

{
  "schema_version" : "1.4.0",
  "id" : "GHSA-w5q7-xvcj-p6c8",
  "modified" : "2026-05-30T12:30:23Z",
  "published" : "2026-05-27T15:33:17Z",
  "aliases" : [ "CVE-2026-45942" ],
  "details" : "In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:\n\next4: fix e4b bitmap inconsistency reports\n\nA bitmap inconsistency issue was observed during stress tests under\nmixed huge-page workloads. Ext4 reported multiple e4b bitmap check\nfailures like:\n\next4_mb_complex_scan_group:2508: group 350, 8179 free clusters as\nper group info. But got 8192 blocks\n\nAnalysis and experimentation confirmed that the issue is caused by a\nrace condition between page migration and bitmap modification. Although\nthis timing window is extremely narrow, it is still hit in practice:\n\nfolio_lock                        ext4_mb_load_buddy\n__migrate_folio\n  check ref count\n  folio_mc_copy                     __filemap_get_folio\n                                      folio_try_get(folio)\n                                  ......\n                                  mb_mark_used\n                                  ext4_mb_unload_buddy\n  __folio_migrate_mapping\n    folio_ref_freeze\nfolio_unlock\n\nThe root cause of this issue is that the fast path of load_buddy only\nincrements the folio's reference count, which is insufficient to prevent\nconcurrent folio migration. We observed that the folio migration process\nacquires the folio lock. Therefore, we can determine whether to take the\nfast path in load_buddy by checking the lock status. If the folio is\nlocked, we opt for the slow path (which acquires the lock) to close this\nconcurrency window.\n\nAdditionally, this change addresses the following issues:\n\nWhen the DOUBLE_CHECK macro is enabled to inspect bitmap-related\nissues, the following error may be triggered:\n\ncorruption in group 324 at byte 784(6272): f in copy != ff on\ndisk/prealloc\n\nAnalysis reveals that this is a false positive. There is a specific race\nwindow where the bitmap and the group descriptor become momentarily\ninconsistent, leading to this error report:\n\next4_mb_load_buddy                   ext4_mb_load_buddy\n  __filemap_get_folio(create|lock)\n    folio_lock\n  ext4_mb_init_cache\n    folio_mark_uptodate\n                                     __filemap_get_folio(no lock)\n                                     ......\n                                     mb_mark_used\n                                       mb_mark_used_double\n  mb_cmp_bitmaps\n                                       mb_set_bits(e4b->bd_bitmap)\n  folio_unlock\n\nThe original logic assumed that since mb_cmp_bitmaps is called when the\nbitmap is newly loaded from disk, the folio lock would be sufficient to\nprevent concurrent access. However, this overlooks a specific race\ncondition: if another process attempts to load buddy and finds the folio\nis already in an uptodate state, it will immediately begin using it without\nholding folio lock.",
  "severity" : [ {
    "type" : "CVSS_V3",
    "score" : "CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H"
  } ],
  "affected" : [ ],
  "references" : [ {
    "type" : "ADVISORY",
    "url" : "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-45942"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/29a07d691d282faf38c33d4b61839b89399110f9"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/57e83bfbe1e412ac42daced2086f3c6f9a17bba0"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bdc56a9c46b2a99c12313122b9352b619a2e719e"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c05033cfc5c7699cd4df8d48cef94d01da755f24"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f29709a7a3fc38f5015d850504762cdef0e151f9"
  } ],
  "database_specific" : {
    "cwe_ids" : [ "CWE-362" ],
    "severity" : "HIGH",
    "github_reviewed" : false,
    "github_reviewed_at" : null,
    "nvd_published_at" : "2026-05-27T14:17:10Z"
  }
}