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

nilfs2: fix general protection fault in nilfs_btree_insert()

If nilfs2 reads a corrupted disk image and tries to reads a b-tree node
block by calling __nilfs_btree_get_block() against an invalid virtual
block address, it returns -ENOENT because conversion of the virtual block
address to a disk block address fails. However, this return value is the
same as the internal code that b-tree lookup routines return to indicate
that the block being searched does not exist, so functions that operate on
that b-tree may misbehave.

When nilfs_btree_insert() receives this spurious ‘not found’ code from
nilfs_btree_do_lookup(), it misunderstands that the ‘not found’ check was
successful and continues the insert operation using incomplete lookup path
data, causing the following crash:

general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address
0xdffffc0000000005: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP KASAN
KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000028-0x000000000000002f]
…
RIP: 0010:nilfs_btree_get_nonroot_node fs/nilfs2/btree.c:418 [inline]
RIP: 0010:nilfs_btree_prepare_insert fs/nilfs2/btree.c:1077 [inline]
RIP: 0010:nilfs_btree_insert+0x6d3/0x1c10 fs/nilfs2/btree.c:1238
Code: bc 24 80 00 00 00 4c 89 f8 48 c1 e8 03 42 80 3c 28 00 74 08 4c 89
ff e8 4b 02 92 fe 4d 8b 3f 49 83 c7 28 4c 89 f8 48 c1 e8 03 <42> 80 3c
28 00 74 08 4c 89 ff e8 2e 02 92 fe 4d 8b 3f 49 83 c7 02
…
Call Trace:
<TASK>
nilfs_bmap_do_insert fs/nilfs2/bmap.c:121 [inline]
nilfs_bmap_insert+0x20d/0x360 fs/nilfs2/bmap.c:147
nilfs_get_block+0x414/0x8d0 fs/nilfs2/inode.c:101
__block_write_begin_int+0x54c/0x1a80 fs/buffer.c:1991
__block_write_begin fs/buffer.c:2041 [inline]
block_write_begin+0x93/0x1e0 fs/buffer.c:2102
nilfs_write_begin+0x9c/0x110 fs/nilfs2/inode.c:261
generic_perform_write+0x2e4/0x5e0 mm/filemap.c:3772
__generic_file_write_iter+0x176/0x400 mm/filemap.c:3900
generic_file_write_iter+0xab/0x310 mm/filemap.c:3932
call_write_iter include/linux/fs.h:2186 [inline]
new_sync_write fs/read_write.c:491 [inline]
vfs_write+0x7dc/0xc50 fs/read_write.c:584
ksys_write+0x177/0x2a0 fs/read_write.c:637
do_syscall_x64 arch/x86/entry/common.c:50 [inline]
do_syscall_64+0x3d/0xb0 arch/x86/entry/common.c:80
entry_SYSCALL_64_after_hwframe+0x63/0xcd
…
</TASK>

This patch fixes the root cause of this problem by replacing the error
code that __nilfs_btree_get_block() returns on block address conversion
failure from -ENOENT to another internal code -EINVAL which means that the
b-tree metadata is corrupted.

By returning -EINVAL, it propagates without glitches, and for all relevant
b-tree operations, functions in the upper bmap layer output an error
message indicating corrupted b-tree metadata via
nilfs_bmap_convert_error(), and code -EIO will be eventually returned as
it should be.