CVE-2026-23238

Updated on 04 Mar 2026

Severity

5.5 Medium severity

Details

CVSS score
5.5
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Overview

About vulnerability

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

romfs: check sb_set_blocksize() return value

romfs_fill_super() ignores the return value of sb_set_blocksize(), which can fail if the requested block size is incompatible with the block device’s configuration.

This can be triggered by setting a loop device’s block size larger than PAGE_SIZE using ioctl(LOOP_SET_BLOCK_SIZE, 32768), then mounting a romfs filesystem on that device.

When sb_set_blocksize(sb, ROMBSIZE) is called with ROMBSIZE=4096 but the device has logical_block_size=32768, bdev_validate_blocksize() fails because the requested size is smaller than the device’s logical block size. sb_set_blocksize() returns 0 (failure), but romfs ignores this and continues mounting.

The superblock’s block size remains at the device’s logical block size (32768). Later, when sb_bread() attempts I/O with this oversized block size, it triggers a kernel BUG in folio_set_bh():

kernel BUG at fs/buffer.c:1582! BUG_ON(size > PAGE_SIZE);

Fix by checking the return value of sb_set_blocksize() and failing the mount with -EINVAL if it returns 0.

Details

Affected packages:
kernel @ 4.18.0 (+15 more)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

romfs: check sb_set_blocksize() return value

romfs_fill_super() ignores the return value of sb_set_blocksize(), which can fail if the requested block size is incompatible with the block device’s configuration.

This can be triggered by setting a loop device’s block size larger than PAGE_SIZE using ioctl(LOOP_SET_BLOCK_SIZE, 32768), then mounting a romfs filesystem on that device.

When sb_set_blocksize(sb, ROMBSIZE) is called with ROMBSIZE=4096 but the device has logical_block_size=32768, bdev_validate_blocksize() fails because the requested size is smaller than the device’s logical block size. sb_set_blocksize() returns 0 (failure), but romfs ignores this and continues mounting.

The superblock’s block size remains at the device’s logical block size (32768). Later, when sb_bread() attempts I/O with this oversized block size, it triggers a kernel BUG in folio_set_bh():

kernel BUG at fs/buffer.c:1582! BUG_ON(size > PAGE_SIZE);

Fix by checking the return value of sb_set_blocksize() and failing the mount with -EINVAL if it returns 0.

Fixes