CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2024-40972 — Linux Linux Kernel security vulnerability

Medium CVSS 5.5

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: do not create EA inode under buffer lock ext4_xattr_set_entry() creates new EA inodes while holding buffer lock on the external xattr block. This is problematic as it nests all the allocation locking (which acquires locks on other buffers) under the buffer lock. This can even deadlock when the filesystem is corrupted and e.g. quota file is setup to contain xattr block as data block. Move the allocation of EA inode out of ext4_xattr_set_entry() into the callers.

Severity
Medium
CVSS
5.5 (3.1)
Published
2024-07-12
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
linux/kernel
Weaknesses
CWE-667

Affected products

  • linux / linux_kernel

Showing 1 representative product identities from 3 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Race condition, TOCTOU, and lifecycle synchronization

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Map concurrent actors, shared state, lock boundaries, signals, callbacks, retries, and check-then-use sequences in the affected path.
  • Determine whether untrusted users can influence timing, object names, filesystem state, or repeated state transitions.
  • Identify clustered and multi-process behavior that repository-local tests may not represent.

Remediate safely

  • Make the sensitive state transition atomic or protect it with a consistently ordered synchronization primitive.
  • Perform authorization and invariant checks on the same authoritative object and transaction used for the operation.
  • Use unique private resources, safe ownership transfer, and idempotent operations; add deterministic concurrency regression tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.