CVE-2024-53131
kernel: nilfs2: fix null-ptr-deref in block_touch_buffer tracepoint
Severity
LowRed Hat Product Security
CVSS 3.1
Review impact separately from score.
Published · December 4, 2024
Updated · November 21, 2025
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
nilfs2: fix null-ptr-deref in block_touch_buffer tracepoint
Patch series "nilfs2: fix null-ptr-deref bugs on block tracepoints".
This series fixes null pointer dereference bugs that occur when using nilfs2 and two block-related tracepoints.
This patch (of 2):
It has been reported that when using "block:block_touch_buffer" tracepoint, touch_buffer() called from __nilfs_get_folio_block() causes a NULL pointer dereference, or a general protection fault when KASAN is enabled.
This happens because since the tracepoint was added in touch_buffer(), it references the dev_t member bh->b_bdev->bd_dev regardless of whether the buffer head has a pointer to a block_device structure. In the current implementation, the block_device structure is set after the function returns to the caller.
Here, touch_buffer() is used to mark the folio/page that owns the buffer head as accessed, but the common search helper for folio/page used by the caller function was optimized to mark the folio/page as accessed when it was reimplemented a long time ago, eliminating the need to call touch_buffer() here in the first place.
So this solves the issue by eliminating the touch_buffer() call itself.
CVSS score applicability
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.
Mitigation
No mitigation is specified in collected source.
CVSS / CWE
CVSS 3.1 · 5.5CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE-476 · NULL Pointer Dereference