In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: btrfs: fix uninitialized pointer free in add_inode_ref() The add_inode_ref() function does not initialize the "name" struct when it is declared. If any of the following calls to "read_one_inode() returns NULL, dir = read_one_inode(root, parent_objectid); if (!dir) { ret = -ENOENT; goto out; } inode = read_one_inode(root, inode_objectid); if (!inode) { ret = -EIO; goto out; } then "name.name" would be freed on "out" before being initialized. out: ... kfree(name.name); This issue was reported by Coverity with CID 1526744.