CVE-2026-72185
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ntfs: fix WARN_ON for resident attribute in ntfs_map_runlist_nolock()
When ntfs_map_runlist_nolock() needs to look up the attribute extent
containing a target VCN (ctx_needs_reset == true), it calls
ntfs_attr_lookup() and then expects the result to be a non-resident
attribute, since only non-resident attributes have a mapping pairs
array to decompress.
A crafted NTFS image can place a resident attribute where a non-resident
one is expected, causing ntfs_attr_lookup() to succeed but return a
resident attribute record. Previously this was caught only by a
WARN_ON(), which does not stop execution. The code then falls through to
read a->data.non_resident.highest_vcn from what is actually a resident
attribute, accessing the wrong union member and corrupting the VCN range
check.
The caller path triggering this warning during mount is:
ntfs_map_runlist_nolock
ntfs_empty_logfile
load_system_files
ntfs_fill_super
In this path ctx is NULL, so ntfs_map_runlist_nolock() allocates a
temporary search context internally and sets ctx_needs_reset = true.
The existing resident-attribute guard in the ctx != NULL branch already
returns -EIO silently for the same condition; make the ctx_needs_reset
path consistent by replacing the WARN_ON() with the same -EIO error
return.
This causes the crafted image to be rejected with a mount error instead
of triggering a kernel warning.