FreeBSD VuXML: Documenting security issues in FreeBSD and the FreeBSD Ports Collection

FreeBSD -- Heap overflow in FUSE_LISTXATTR

Affected packages
15.0 <= FreeBSD-kernel < 15.0_9
14.4 <= FreeBSD-kernel < 14.4_5
14.3 <= FreeBSD-kernel < 14.3_14

Details

VuXML ID 3cc34467-54b6-11f1-8d7a-bc241121aa0a
Discovery 2026-05-20
Entry 2026-05-21

Problem Description:

When a fusefs file system implements extended attributes, the kernel may send a FUSE_LISTXATTR message to the userspace daemon to retrieve the list of extended attributes for a given file. The FUSE protocol requires the daemon to return a packed list of NUL-terminated strings. The fusefs kernel module calls strlen() on this daemon-supplied buffer without first verifying that the entire list is NUL-terminated.

Impact:

If a malicious daemon sends a non-NUL-terminated list, the fusefs kernel module may read beyond the end of one heap-allocated buffer and potentially write beyond the end of a second buffer. A malicious daemon could disclose up to 253 bytes of kernel heap memory, or it could inject up to 250 attacker-controlled bytes into unallocated kernel heap space.

References

CVE Name CVE-2026-45252
FreeBSD Advisory SA-26:20.fusefs