CVE-2024-57940

Name of the Vulnerable Software and Affected Versions Linux kernel versions prior to 6.6.74

Description The issue arises when a file system is corrupted, causing a cluster to be linked to itself in the cluster chain, and there is an unused directory entry in the cluster. This leads to an infinite loop in the exfat readdir() function because the dentry variable is not incremented, preventing the condition dentry < max dentries from stopping the loop. As a result, the s lock is not released, causing other tasks, such as exfat sync fs(), to hang. The fix involves stopping the traversal of the cluster chain when an unused directory entry is encountered to prevent the infinite loop.

Recommendations For Linux kernel versions prior to 6.6.74, update to version 6.6.74 or later to resolve the issue. As a temporary workaround, consider avoiding the use of corrupted file systems that could trigger the infinite loop in the exfat readdir() function until the update can be applied.