Use After Free in Linux

CVE-2022-49834

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: nilfs2: fix use-after-free bug of ns_writer on remount If a nilfs2 filesystem is downgraded to read-only due to metadata corruption on disk and is remounted read/write, or if emergency read-only remount is performed, detaching a log writer and synchronizing the filesystem can be done at the same time. In these cases, use-after-free of the log writer (hereinafter nilfs->ns_writer) can happen as shown in the scenario below: Task1 Task2 -------------------------------- ------------------------------ nilfs_construct_segment nilfs_segctor_sync init_wait init_waitqueue_entry add_wait_queue schedule nilfs_remount (R/W remount case) nilfs_attach_log_writer nilfs_detach_log_writer nilfs_segctor_destroy kfree finish_wait _raw_spin_lock_irqsave __raw_spin_lock_irqsave do_raw_spin_lock debug_spin_lock_before <-- use-after-free While Task1 is sleeping, nilfs->ns_writer is freed by Task2. After Task1 waked up, Task1 accesses nilfs->ns_writer which is already freed. This scenario diagram is based on the Shigeru Yoshida's post [1]. This patch fixes the issue by not detaching nilfs->ns_writer on remount so that this UAF race doesn't happen. Along with this change, this patch also inserts a few necessary read-only checks with superblock instance where only the ns_writer pointer was used to check if the filesystem is read-only.

Vulnerability class: Use-After-Free

Published 2025-05-01 · last modified 2026-08-04.