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Fencer Intel
medium 5.5

CVE-2025-21721 json

nilfs2: handle errors that nilfs_prepare_chunk() may return

published last yr. modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2025-5232

cvss
5.5
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 13%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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

nilfs2: handle errors that nilfs_prepare_chunk() may return

Patch series "nilfs2: fix issues with rename operations".

This series fixes BUG_ON check failures reported by syzbot around rename operations, and a minor behavioral issue where the mtime of a child directory changes when it is renamed instead of moved.

This patch (of 2):

The directory manipulation routines nilfs_set_link() and nilfs_delete_entry() rewrite the directory entry in the folio/page previously read by nilfs_find_entry(), so error handling is omitted on the assumption that nilfs_prepare_chunk(), which prepares the buffer for rewriting, will always succeed for these. And if an error is returned, it triggers the legacy BUG_ON() checks in each routine.

This assumption is wrong, as proven by syzbot: the buffer layer called by nilfs_prepare_chunk() may call nilfs_get_block() if necessary, which may fail due to metadata corruption or other reasons. This has been there all along, but improved sanity checks and error handling may have made it more reproducible in fuzzing tests.

Fix this issue by adding missing error paths in nilfs_set_link(), nilfs_delete_entry(), and their caller nilfs_rename().

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 5.4.291, 5.10.235, 5.15.179, 6.1.131, 6.6.80, 6.12.13, 6.13.2, 6.14
  • linux Debian 12 6.1.133-1
  • linux Debian 14, Debian 13 6.12.13-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2025-21721

  • linux Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-216.236
  • linux Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-140.150
  • linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-64.67
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1146.156
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1084.91
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 24.04 LTS 6.8.0-1032.34
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 5.4.0-1149.158
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 5.15.0-1083.92

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2025-21721

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Is CVE-2025-21721 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2025-21721 updated

kernel: nilfs2: handle errors that nilfs_prepare_chunk() may return

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.23% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 13% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 5.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Weakness
Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.