CVE-2025-71265
MediumCVSS 5.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk2th percentile - higher than 2% of all known CVEs
Summary
In the Linux kernel's NTFS3 filesystem, an infinite loop bug was found. Inconsistent NTFS metadata, where an attribute reports an empty run list (evcn=-1) but the directory expects data, causes attr_load_runs_range() to loop indefinitely, exhausting system resources.
Risk Assessment
An attacker can provide a crafted NTFS image, causing a system hang (DoS) via an infinite loop in the kernel. The risk affects systems mounting untrusted NTFS partitions, e.g., in virtualization or file-sharing environments.
Recommendation
Immediately update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix (commit adding a retry counter in attr_load_runs_range()). If an update is not possible, avoid mounting untrusted NTFS images.
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fs: ntfs3: fix infinite loop in attr_load_runs_range on inconsistent metadata We found an infinite loop bug in the ntfs3 file system that can lead to a Denial-of-Service (DoS) condition. A malformed NTFS image can cause an infinite loop when an attribute header indicates an empty run list, while directory entries reference it as containing actual data. In NTFS, setting evcn=-1 with svcn=0 is a valid way to represent an empty run list, and run_unpack() correctly handles this by checking if evcn + 1 equals svcn and returning early without parsing any run data. However, this creates a problem when there is metadata inconsistency, where the attribute header claims to be empty (evcn=-1) but the caller expects to read actual data. When run_unpack() immediately returns success upon seeing this condition, it leaves the runs_tree uninitialized with run->runs as a NULL. The calling function attr_load_runs_range() assumes that a successful return means that the runs were loaded and sets clen to 0, expecting the next run_lookup_entry() call to succeed. Because runs_tree remains uninitialized, run_lookup_entry() continues to fail, and the loop increments vcn by zero (vcn += 0), leading to an infinite loop. This patch adds a retry counter to detect when run_lookup_entry() fails consecutively after attr_load_runs_vcn(). If the run is still not found on the second attempt, it indicates corrupted metadata and returns -EINVAL, preventing the Denial-of-Service (DoS) vulnerability.

