CVE-2026-72185
CriticalCVSS 9.8Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk11th percentile - higher than 11% of all known CVEs
Summary
In the Linux kernel's NTFS filesystem, ntfs_map_runlist_nolock() can encounter a resident attribute where a non-resident one is expected, previously triggering only a WARN_ON and leading to reading the wrong union member. The fix replaces the WARN_ON with an -EIO error return, causing crafted images to be rejected during mount.
Risk Assessment
A crafted NTFS image could trigger a kernel warning and potentially lead to incorrect behavior, but the fix eliminates this risk by rejecting the image.
Recommendation
Install the kernel patch to avoid warnings and potential errors when mounting malicious NTFS images.
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ntfs: fix WARN_ON for resident attribute in ntfs_map_runlist_nolock() When ntfs_map_runlist_nolock() needs to look up the attribute extent containing a target VCN (ctx_needs_reset == true), it calls ntfs_attr_lookup() and then expects the result to be a non-resident attribute, since only non-resident attributes have a mapping pairs array to decompress. A crafted NTFS image can place a resident attribute where a non-resident one is expected, causing ntfs_attr_lookup() to succeed but return a resident attribute record. Previously this was caught only by a WARN_ON(), which does not stop execution. The code then falls through to read a->data.non_resident.highest_vcn from what is actually a resident attribute, accessing the wrong union member and corrupting the VCN range check. The caller path triggering this warning during mount is: ntfs_map_runlist_nolock ntfs_empty_logfile load_system_files ntfs_fill_super In this path ctx is NULL, so ntfs_map_runlist_nolock() allocates a temporary search context internally and sets ctx_needs_reset = true. The existing resident-attribute guard in the ctx != NULL branch already returns -EIO silently for the same condition; make the ctx_needs_reset path consistent by replacing the WARN_ON() with the same -EIO error return. This causes the crafted image to be rejected with a mount error instead of triggering a kernel warning.