CVE-2026-74321 — btrfs: fix invalid pointer dereference in __btrfs_run_delayed_refs()

Affected: Linux

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

btrfs: fix invalid pointer dereference in __btrfs_run_delayed_refs()

In the beginning of the loop, we try to obtain a locked delayed ref head, if 'locked_ref' is currently NULL, by calling btrfs_select_ref_head(), which can return an error pointer. If the error pointer is -EAGAIN we do a continue and go back to the beginning of the loop, which will not try again to call btrfs_select_ref_head() since 'locked_ref' is no longer NULL but it's ERR_PTR(-EAGAIN), and then we do:

spin_lock(&locked_ref->lock);

against a ERR_PTR(-EAGAIN) value, generating an invalid pointer dereference.

Fix this by ensuring that 'locked_ref' is set to NULL when btrfs_select_ref_head() returns ERR_PTR(-EAGAIN) and incrementing 'count' as well, to prevent infinite looping. We do this by doing a goto to the bottom of the loop that already sets 'locked_ref' to NULL and does a cond_resched(), with an increment to 'count' right before the goto. These measures were in place before the refactoring in commit 0110a4c43451 ("btrfs: refactor __btrfs_run_delayed_refs loop") but were unintentionally lost afterwards.

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CVE-2026-74321 — btrfs: fix invalid pointer dereference in __btrfs_run_delayed_refs()