CVE-2025-40190
NoneCVSS
—
EPSS
0.2%
Published
Nov 12, 2025
CISA due date
—
The record
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: guard against EA inode refcount underflow in xattr update syzkaller found a path where ext4_xattr_inode_update_ref() reads an EA inode refcount that is already <= 0 and then applies ref_change (often -1). That lets the refcount underflow and we proceed with a bogus value, triggering errors like: EXT4-fs error: EA inode <n> ref underflow: ref_count=-1 ref_change=-1 EXT4-fs warning: ea_inode dec ref err=-117 Make the invariant explicit: if the current refcount is non-positive, treat this as on-disk corruption, emit ext4_error_inode(), and fail the operation with -EFSCORRUPTED instead of updating the refcount. Delete the WARN_ONCE() as negative refcounts are now impossible; keep error reporting in ext4_error_inode(). This prevents the underflow and the follow-on orphan/cleanup churn.
Affected packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Introduced | Fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linux | Kernel | 0 | 5.4.301 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | dtb-aarch64 | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-64kb | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-azure | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-default | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-default-base | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1.160000.2.6 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-docs | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-kvmsmall | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-obs-build | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-obs-qa | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-rt | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-source | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-syms | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
| openSUSE:Leap 16.0 | kernel-zfcpdump | 0 | 6.12.0-160000.9.1 |
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