CVE-2025-40190 | ext4: guard against EA inode refcount underflow in xattr update

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: guard against EA inode refcount underflow in xattr update syzkaller found a path where ext4_xattr_inode_update_ref() reads an EA inode refcount that is already <= 0 and then applies ref_change (often -1). That lets the refcount underflow and we proceed with a bogus value, triggering errors like: EXT4-fs error: EA inode <n> ref underflow: ref_count=-1 ref_change=-1 EXT4-fs warning: ea_inode dec ref err=-117 Make the invariant explicit: if the current refcount is non-positive, treat this as on-disk corruption, emit ext4_error_inode(), and fail the operation with -EFSCORRUPTED instead of updating the refcount. Delete the WARN_ONCE() as negative refcounts are now impossible; keep error reporting in ext4_error_inode(). This prevents the underflow and the follow-on orphan/cleanup churn.

Published: 2025-11-12 Last update: 2026-04-15 Assigner: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 Source: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Conclusion & alert: CVE-2025-40190 is rated Low Risk (19.3/100): low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.06%). 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-2025-40190

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 2025-12-18 0.02% 0.06% +0.04%
2 2025-11-13 0.02%

Full EPSS history (2 records total)

Common vulnerability scoring system (CVSS) metrics for CVE-2025-40190

CVSS metrics for this CVE.

No CVSS data in dataset for this CVE.

Weakness enumeration for CVE-2025-40190

OS Trackers for CVE-2025-40190

vendor priority summary link
debian not yet assigned CVE-2025-40190 not yet assigned priority: Debian including 2 source packages (linux, linux-6.1), 6 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): resolved 6. https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2025-40190
redhat medium https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-40190
suse medium CVE-2025-40190 severity moderate: SUSE including 399 source package names (13.2-9.1:libsystemd0-254.23-1.1, 13.2-9.1:libudev1-254.23-1.1, …), 743 product×package rows across 117 product lines (Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/baremetal-os-container, Container suse/sl-micro/6.0/base-os-container, … (117 product lines)): Fixed 431, Known Affected 231, Known Not Affected 56, First Fixed 25. https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2025-40190/
ubuntu medium CVE-2025-40190 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, needed 214, ignored 181. https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2025-40190

Affected software / configurations for CVE-2025-40190

Vendor Product Version Raw CPE
No affected products in dataset.

References for CVE-2025-40190

cvelogic Threat Intelligence