CVE-2022-50673

A use-after-free vulnerability was found in the ext4 filesystem's orphan inode cleanup routine in the Linux kernel. When ext4_inode_attach_jinode() fails with -ENOMEM during orphan cleanup at mount time, the error is not properly propagated. The inode is freed via iput(), but the orphan list still references the same inode number. On the next loop iteration, the freed inode structure is reused, triggering a use-after-free when adding it to the orphan list.

This issue is triggered by a specially crafted disk image containing on-disk metadata inconsistencies. Exploitation requires that an attacker convince a user to download and use a malicious image from an untrusted source, a scenario with limited practical impact. Red Hat rates this as Low severity.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.