CVE-2022-50839

A buffer head reference count leak was found in the JBD2 journaling layer (used by ext4). When jbd2_fc_wait_bufs() encounters a non-uptodate buffer and returns -EIO, the journal offset is not updated, causing subsequent buffer release to skip some buffer heads.

This affects ext4 filesystems using fast commit. The leak occurs only on I/O error paths during journaling and leads to gradual memory consumption rather than an immediate crash. Regular ext4 operation without I/O errors is unaffected.

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.