CVE-2024-52560

Quoted from the kernel CNA's own scoring file, word for word. A highlighted metric carries the most severe value CVSS v3.1 defines for it, which is what pushes the score up. source

AV:LAttack vector, local

The corrupt MFT record arrives on a locally attached or loop-backed block device and is triggered through ordinary local path resolution and file operations (the syzbot trace is `__do_sys_mount` → `user_path_at` → `path_lookupat` → `step_into` → `pick_link`); no network protocol or remote peer feeds `mi_enum_attr()`.

AC:LAttack complexity, low

The attacker authors the entire on-disk MFT record, so which validation check in `mi_enum_attr()` fails and where enumeration silently truncates is fully deterministic, and the stale `i_dir_seq`/`i_link` union value is influenced by ordinary directory operations the attacker performs; no race and no memory-layout condition lies outside the attacker's control, and the trigger is repeatable at will.

PR:LPrivileges required, low

ntfs3 registers without `FS_USERNS_MOUNT`, but udisks2 loop-setup/filesystem-mount and removable-media automount hand the mount to any active local session on desktop, kiosk, NAS and media-appliance deployments, and ntfs3 mounts default to permissive uid/gid/fmask/dmask; once mounted, an unprivileged user reaches the fault through plain pathname resolution and truncate/write with no capability check anywhere on the path.

UI:NUser interaction, none

The attacker supplies the crafted image, gets it mounted via automount/udisks2, and then performs the triggering lookup and `attr_set_size`-inducing write itself; no action by any other user or administrator is required.

S:UScope, unchanged

The wild-pointer dereference, the inode/dentry type desynchronization, and the on-disk metadata damage all occur within the kernel's own security authority; no VM, IOMMU, or sandbox boundary is crossed.

C:HConfidentiality impact, high

`pick_link()` dereferences `inode->i_link`, which ntfs3 never sets and which is a union aliasing `i_pipe`/`i_cdev`/`i_dir_seq` — an attacker-influenced value that path resolution then reads as a NUL-terminated string and consumes as a path, giving a steerable kernel read primitive on configurations without KASAN; the freed-but-still-referenced MFT records from `ni_write_inode()` additionally cross-link attributes and clusters between unrelated files.

I:HIntegrity impact, high

The bogus symlink body redirects path resolution to attacker-chosen targets, and the write path corrupts persistent state — `ni_write_inode()` calls `clear_rec_inuse()` plus `ntfs_mark_rec_free()` on records that still hold live attributes, while `mi_insert_attr()` `memmove`/`memset`s a new attribute over live attribute bytes at `rec->used - 8` and bumps `rec->used`, with both written back to disk and re-parsed later.

A:HAvailability impact, high

syzbot reproduced a general protection fault / KASAN null-ptr-deref at `pick_link+0x51c` (fs/namei.c:1864) five times across 6.12-rc6 through 6.15, oopsing the task mid-path-resolution — a full panic on the many embedded and hardened deployments running `panic_on_oops`, and otherwise a tainted kernel with leaked path/mount references and a volume flagged `NTFS_DIRTY_ERROR`.