CVE-2023-54158 | btrfs: don't free qgroup space unless specified

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: btrfs: don't free qgroup space unless specified Boris noticed in his simple quotas testing that he was getting a leak with Sweet Tea's change to subvol create that stopped doing a transaction commit. This was just a side effect of that change. In the delayed inode code we have an optimization that will free extra reservations if we think we can pack a dir item into an already modified leaf. Previously this wouldn't be triggered in the subvolume create case because we'd commit the transaction, it was still possible but much harder to trigger. It could actually be triggered if we did a mkdir && subvol create with qgroups enabled. This occurs because in btrfs_insert_delayed_dir_index(), which gets called when we're adding the dir item, we do the following: btrfs_block_rsv_release(fs_info, trans->block_rsv, bytes, NULL); if we're able to skip reserving space. The problem here is that trans->block_rsv points at the temporary block rsv for the subvolume create, which has qgroup reservations in the block rsv. This is a problem because btrfs_block_rsv_release() will do the following: if (block_rsv->qgroup_rsv_reserved >= block_rsv->qgroup_rsv_size) { qgroup_to_release = block_rsv->qgroup_rsv_reserved - block_rsv->qgroup_rsv_size; block_rsv->qgroup_rsv_reserved = block_rsv->qgroup_rsv_size; } The temporary block rsv just has ->qgroup_rsv_reserved set, ->qgroup_rsv_size == 0. The optimization in btrfs_insert_delayed_dir_index() sets ->qgroup_rsv_reserved = 0. Then later on when we call btrfs_subvolume_release_metadata() which has btrfs_block_rsv_release(fs_info, rsv, (u64)-1, &qgroup_to_release); btrfs_qgroup_convert_reserved_meta(root, qgroup_to_release); qgroup_to_release is set to 0, and we do not convert the reserved metadata space. The problem here is that the block rsv code has been unconditionally messing with ->qgroup_rsv_reserved, because the main place this is used is delalloc, and any time we call btrfs_block_rsv_release() we do it with qgroup_to_release set, and thus do the proper accounting. The subvolume code is the only other code that uses the qgroup reservation stuff, but it's intermingled with the above optimization, and thus was getting its reservation freed out from underneath it and thus leaking the reserved space. The solution is to simply not mess with the qgroup reservations if we don't have qgroup_to_release set. This works with the existing code as anything that messes with the delalloc reservations always have qgroup_to_release set. This fixes the leak that Boris was observing.

Published: 2025-12-24 Last update: 2026-04-15 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2023-54158 is rated Low Risk (6/100): low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.02%). Mandatory action: Low composite risk—no urgent action required; patch on your normal maintenance cycle and revisit priority if CVSS or EPSS increases.

Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.

Exploit prediction scoring system (EPSS) score for CVE-2023-54158

EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).

# Date Old EPSS score New EPSS score Delta (New - Old)
1 2025-12-25 0.02%

Full EPSS history (1 record total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2023-54158

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

No CVSS data in dataset for this CVE.

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2023-54158

OS Trackers for CVE-2023-54158

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2023-54158 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 1 source packages (linux), 5 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 5. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2023-54158
redhat https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-54158
suse medium CVE-2023-54158 severity moderate: SUSE including 25 source package names (cluster-md-kmp-default, dlm-kmp-default, …), 179 product×package rows across 36 product lines (SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP6, SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7, … (36 product lines)): Known Not Affected 179. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2023-54158/
ubuntu medium CVE-2023-54158 medium priority: Ubuntu including 157 source packages (linux, linux-allwinner-5.19, …), 1405 status rows across 9 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, plucky, questing, trusty, upstream, xenial): DNE 1010, ignored 177, released 133, not-affected 64, needed 20, needs-triage 1. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2023-54158

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2023-54158

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
No affected products in dataset.

References for CVE-2023-54158

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