Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2023-53618

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: btrfs: reject invalid reloc tree root keys with stack dump [BUG] Syzbot reported a crash that an ASSERT() got triggered inside prepare_to_merge(). That ASSERT() makes sure the reloc tree is properly pointed back by its subvolume tree. [CAUSE] After more debugging output, it turns out we had an invalid reloc tree: BTRFS error (device loop1): reloc tree mismatch, root 8 has no reloc root, expect reloc root key (-8, 132, 8) gen 17 Note the above root key is (TREE_RELOC_OBJECTID, ROOT_ITEM, QUOTA_TREE_OBJECTID), meaning it's a reloc tree for quota tree. But reloc trees can only exist for subvolumes, as for non-subvolume trees, we just COW the involved tree block, no need to create a reloc tree since those tree blocks won't be shared with other trees. Only subvolumes tree can share tree blocks with other trees (thus they have BTRFS_ROOT_SHAREABLE flag). Thus this new debug output proves my previous assumption that corrupted on-disk data can trigger that ASSERT(). [FIX] Besides the dedicated fix and the graceful exit, also let tree-checker to check such root keys, to make sure reloc trees can only exist for subvolumes.

EPSS: 0.002 (8.5th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

Affected products

  • Linux — versions 5.4, fba904d68c8bbfcc89c2210cfcb2351be90bc3e5, 259ee7754b6793af8bdd77f9ca818bc41cfe9541
  • Linux Linux_kernel — versions 6.5

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2023-53618?
CVE-2023-53618 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 5.5/10. Published 2025-10-07.
How severe is CVE-2023-53618?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.5 out of 10.