CVE-2026-23252
Analyzed Analyzed - Analysis Complete

Memory Allocation Failure in Linux Kernel XFS Debugging Macros

Publication date: 2026-03-18

Last updated on: 2026-06-01

Assigner: kernel.org

Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: xfs: get rid of the xchk_xfile_*_descr calls The xchk_xfile_*_descr macros call kasprintf, which can fail to allocate memory if the formatted string is larger than 16 bytes (or whatever the nofail guarantees are nowadays). Some of them could easily exceed that, and Jiaming Zhang found a few places where that can happen with syzbot. The descriptions are debugging aids and aren't required to be unique, so let's just pass in static strings and eliminate this path to failure. Note this patch touches a number of commits, most of which were merged between 6.6 and 6.14.

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Meta Information

Published
2026-03-18
Last Modified
2026-06-01
Generated
2026-07-07
AI Q&A
2026-03-18
EPSS Evaluated
2026-07-05
NVD
CVE-2026-23252
EUVD
EUVD-2026-12858

Affected Vendors & Products

Showing 3 associated CPEs
Vendor Product Version / Range
linux linux_kernel From 6.13 (inc) to 6.18.16 (exc)
linux linux_kernel From 6.19 (inc) to 6.19.6 (exc)
linux linux_kernel From 6.10 (inc) to 6.12.78 (exc)

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Exploitability

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CWE ID Description
CWE-UNKNOWN

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Executive Summary

This vulnerability exists in the Linux kernel's xfs filesystem code. It involves the use of xchk_xfile_*_descr macros that call the kasprintf function to allocate memory for formatted strings. If the formatted string exceeds 16 bytes or the current nofail guarantees, kasprintf can fail to allocate memory. This failure can occur because some descriptions used for debugging can be larger than expected. The vulnerability was identified by Jiaming Zhang using syzbot. The fix involved replacing these dynamic allocations with static strings to eliminate the risk of memory allocation failure.

Impact Analysis

The vulnerability can cause memory allocation failures during debugging operations in the xfs filesystem code. Since the descriptions are debugging aids and not required to be unique, failure to allocate memory for these strings could potentially lead to unexpected behavior or crashes during debugging or filesystem checks. However, the impact is limited to debugging contexts and does not affect normal filesystem operations.

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