CVE-2026-93048 PUBLISHED

mtd: part: reject MTDPART_OFS_RETAIN in mtd_add_partition()

Assigner: Linux
Reserved: 17.09.2026 Published: 17.09.2026 Updated: 17.09.2026

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

mtd: part: reject MTDPART_OFS_RETAIN in mtd_add_partition()

mtd_add_partition() does not reject the special offset value MTDPART_OFS_RETAIN (-3), which leads to a WARN_ON in add_mtd_device() when called through the BLKPG ioctl on NAND devices. The RETAIN value depends on cur_offset being the end of the previous partition, but in the dynamic partition path cur_offset equals the offset argument itself, causing undefined behavior.

Commit 5daa7b21496a ("mtd: prepare partition add and del functions for ioctl requests") introduced mtd_add_partition() and correctly rejected MTDPART_OFS_APPEND (-1) and MTDPART_OFS_NXTBLK (-2), since those special offsets rely on cur_offset tracking the previous partition's end. However, commit 1a31368bf92e ("mtd: add a flags for partitions which should just leave smth. after them") later added MTDPART_OFS_RETAIN (-3) for the static partition table path without updating mtd_add_partition() to also reject this value.

With offset=-3 passed via BLKPG, the RETAIN size calculation in allocate_partition() underflows (parent_size - 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFD = parent_size + 3). If the underflow result does not appear to leave enough space, allocate_partition() jumps to out_register via goto, skipping erasesize initialization. This results in erasesize=0, which triggers:

WARN_ON((!mtd->erasesize || !master->_erase) && !(mtd->flags & MTD_NO_ERASE))

in add_mtd_device(). If the underflow result appears to leave enough space, a bogus partition size is calculated, but the "out of reach" sanity check catches the invalid offset and creates a disabled empty partition (offset=0, size=0) instead of returning an error.

Fix this by adding MTDPART_OFS_RETAIN to the rejection list in mtd_add_partition(), consistent with the existing handling of APPEND and NXTBLK.

Product Status

Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 1a31368bf92ef2a7da3ba379672c405bd2751df9 to 701c3ae7273e1adc20db5d97c42e0139b479f16b (excl.)
  • affected from 1a31368bf92ef2a7da3ba379672c405bd2751df9 to 6aaab2ace3f7b55733d904e5549acf8405f03642 (excl.)
  • affected from 1a31368bf92ef2a7da3ba379672c405bd2751df9 to 181c1bff940e7d3e34ca485d37e3cdbfe409203c (excl.)
  • affected from 1a31368bf92ef2a7da3ba379672c405bd2751df9 to a536eb57be58442b19398b2783071007ecfb1735 (excl.)
  • affected from 1a31368bf92ef2a7da3ba379672c405bd2751df9 to e204e5c49a012f99638633fdbd773e3c86260053 (excl.)
  • affected from 1a31368bf92ef2a7da3ba379672c405bd2751df9 to 398aca2f90122d5abbabff1079deaeb885fe9e40 (excl.)
  • affected from 1a31368bf92ef2a7da3ba379672c405bd2751df9 to c645f6dd1af2ecc70fd3578e141f2f71fa9e4eff (excl.)
  • affected from 1a31368bf92ef2a7da3ba379672c405bd2751df9 to b759d5bb6265419344ee9729fd0dc07ad85719d8 (excl.)
Vendor Linux
Product Linux
Versions Default: affected
  • Version 3.2 is affected
  • unaffected from 0 to 3.2 (excl.)
  • unaffected from 5.10.270 to 5.10.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 5.15.221 to 5.15.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.1.188 to 6.1.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.6.157 to 6.6.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.12.110 to 6.12.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 6.18.52 to 6.18.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.2.6 to 7.2.* (incl.)
  • unaffected from 7.3-rc1 to * (incl.)

References