In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
fs/ntfs3: add depth limit to indxfindbuffer to prevent stack overflow
indxfindbuffer() recursively descends the B+ tree index with no depth limit. A crafted NTFS image with circular index node references causes unbounded recursion, overflowing the kernel stack and panicking the system.
This is reachable by mounting a malicious NTFS filesystem (e.g. from a USB drive via desktop automount) and deleting a file whose index entry triggers the rebalancing fallback path in indxdeleteentry().
Add a depth parameter and bail out with -EINVAL when it reaches the fnd->nodes array bound, matching the constraint already enforced by fndpush() in indxfind().
The related function indxfind() was previously patched for a similar infinite-loop issue (commit 1732053c8a6b), but indxfind_buffer() was missed.
{
"cna_assigner": "Linux",
"osv_generated_from": "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/tree/main/cves/2026/72xxx/CVE-2026-72194.json"
}