VulnerabilityPublished 27 Feb 2025Updated 27 Oct 2026

CVE-2025-21722: Linux kernel · nilfs2: do not force clear folio if buffer is referenced

Affects Linux kernelSource GCVE Database

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.8 High · fixed in 4.4.0-1150.156 : patch Linux kernel soon.

Data as of 27 Oct 2026, 06:42 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.8High

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

Patch: Available – fixed in 4.4.0-1150.156, 4.15.0-1195.210~14.04.1, 4.4.0-276.310~14.04.1 +101

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: High
Integrity: High
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: Low: The attacker is authorized with (i.e., requires) privileges that provide basic user capabilities that could normally affect only settings and files owned by a user. Alternatively, an attacker with Low privileges may have the ability to cause an impact only to non-sensitive resources.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: High: There is total loss of confidentiality, resulting in all resources within the impacted component being divulged to the attacker. Alternatively, access to only some restricted information is obtained, but the disclosed information presents a direct, serious impact.
Integrity: High: There is a total loss of integrity, or a complete loss of protection. For example, the attacker is able to modify any/all files protected by the impacted component. Alternatively, only some files can be modified, but malicious modification would present a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 27 Feb 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade to a fixed release listed under Affected software.

Patches and advisories

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Ubuntu 24.04 LTSlinux`pkg:deb/ubuntu/linux?arch=source&distro=noble`Other threats	Affected <6.8.0-64.67	Fixed in 6.8.0-64.67
Ubuntu 24.04 LTSlinux-aws`pkg:deb/ubuntu/linux-aws?arch=source&distro=noble`Other threats	Affected <6.8.0-1032.34	Fixed in 6.8.0-1032.34
Ubuntu 24.04 LTSlinux-azure`pkg:deb/ubuntu/linux-azure?arch=source&distro=noble`Other threats	Affected <6.8.0-1034.39	Fixed in 6.8.0-1034.39
Ubuntu 24.04 LTSlinux-azure-6.11`pkg:deb/ubuntu/linux-azure-6.11?arch=source&distro=noble`Other threats	Affected 6.11.0-1008.8~24.04.1 – 6.11.0-1018.18~24.04.1 7 affected builds	Fixed in–
Ubuntu 24.04 LTSlinux-azure-nvidia`pkg:deb/ubuntu/linux-azure-nvidia?arch=source&distro=noble`Other threats	Affected <6.8.0-1022.23	Fixed in 6.8.0-1022.23
Ubuntu 24.04 LTSlinux-gcp`pkg:deb/ubuntu/linux-gcp?arch=source&distro=noble`Other threats	Affected <6.8.0-1033.35	Fixed in 6.8.0-1033.35

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: nilfs2: do not force clear folio if buffer is referenced Patch series "nilfs2: protect busy buffer heads from being force-cleared". This series fixes the buffer head state inconsistency issues reported by syzbot that occurs when the filesystem is corrupted and falls back to read-only, and the associated buffer head use-after-free issue. This patch (of 2): Syzbot has reported that after nilfs2 detects filesystem corruption and falls back to read-only, inconsistencies in the buffer state may occur. One of the inconsistencies is that when nilfs2 calls mark_buffer_dirty() to set a data or metadata buffer as dirty, but it detects that the buffer is not in the uptodate state: WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 6049 at fs/buffer.c:1177 mark_buffer_dirty+0x2e5/0x520 fs/buffer.c:1177 ... Call Trace: <TASK> nilfs_palloc_commit_alloc_entry+0x4b/0x160 fs/nilfs2/alloc.c:598 nilfs_ifile_create_inode+0x1dd/0x3a0 fs/nilfs2/ifile.c:73 nilfs_new_inode+0x254/0x830 fs/nilfs2/inode.c:344 nilfs_mkdir+0x10d/0x340 fs/nilfs2/namei.c:218 vfs_mkdir+0x2f9/0x4f0 fs/namei.c:4257 do_mkdirat+0x264/0x3a0 fs/namei.c:4280 __do_sys_mkdirat fs/namei.c:4295 [inline] __se_sys_mkdirat fs/namei.c:4293 [inline] __x64_sys_mkdirat+0x87/0xa0 fs/namei.c:4293 do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:52 [inline] do_syscall_64+0xf3/0x230 arch/x86/entry/common.c:83 entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x77/0x7f The other is when nilfs_btree_propagate(), which propagates the dirty state to the ancestor nodes of a b-tree that point to a dirty buffer, detects that the origin buffer is not dirty, even though it should be: WARNING: CPU: 0 PID: 5245 at fs/nilfs2/btree.c:2089 nilfs_btree_propagate+0xc79/0xdf0 fs/nilfs2/btree.c:2089 ... Call Trace: <TASK> nilfs_bmap_propagate+0x75/0x120 fs/nilfs2/bmap.c:345 nilfs_collect_file_data+0x4d/0xd0 fs/nilfs2/segment.c:587 nilfs_segctor_apply_buffers+0x184/0x340 fs/nilfs2/segment.c:1006 nilfs_segctor_scan_file+0x28c/0xa50 fs/nilfs2/segment.c:1045 nilfs_segctor_collect_blocks fs/nilfs2/segment.c:1216 [inline] nilfs_segctor_collect fs/nilfs2/segment.c:1540 [inline] nilfs_segctor_do_construct+0x1c28/0x6b90 fs/nilfs2/segment.c:2115 nilfs_segctor_construct+0x181/0x6b0 fs/nilfs2/segment.c:2479 nilfs_segctor_thread_construct fs/nilfs2/segment.c:2587 [inline] nilfs_segctor_thread+0x69e/0xe80 fs/nilfs2/segment.c:2701 kthread+0x2f0/0x390 kernel/kthread.c:389 ret_from_fork+0x4b/0x80 arch/x86/kernel/process.c:147 ret_from_fork_asm+0x1a/0x30 arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S:244 </TASK> Both of these issues are caused by the callbacks that handle the page/folio write requests, forcibly clear various states, including the working state of the buffers they hold, at unexpected times when they detect read-only fallback. Fix these issues by checking if the buffer is referenced before clearing the page/folio state, and skipping the clear if it is.

GCVE source: db.gcve.eu
OSV ID: UBUNTU-CVE-2025-21722
Osv Schema Version: 1.7.0
Ecosystems: Ubuntu:Pro:14.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:16.04:LTS, Ubuntu:16.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:FIPS-updates:16.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:FIPS:16.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:18.04:LTS, Ubuntu:18.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:FIPS-updates:18.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:FIPS:18.04:LTS, Ubuntu:20.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:20.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:FIPS-updates:20.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:FIPS:20.04:LTS, Ubuntu:22.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Nvidia-BlueField:22.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:Realtime:22.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:FIPS-preview:22.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:FIPS-updates:22.04:LTS, Ubuntu:24.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:Realtime:24.04:LTS, Ubuntu:Pro:FIPS-updates:24.04:LTS
CVSS version: 3.1

References

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