Advisory [CVE-2026-64318] bound the pp_count scan to the ppe array

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: partitions: aix: bound the pp_count scan to the ppe array aix_partition() reads the physical volume descriptor into a fixed-size struct pvd and then scans its physical-partition-extent array: int numpps = be16_to_cpu(pvd->pp_count);... for (i = 0; i ppe + i;... lp_ix = be16_to_cpu(p->lp_ix); pvd points at a single kmalloc()'d struct pvd whose ppe[] member holds a fixed ARRAY_SIZE(pvd->ppe) (1016) entries, but the loop runs up to the on-disk pp_count. pp_count is an unvalidated __be16 read straight from the descriptor, so a crafted AIX image with pp_count larger than 1016 drives the loop to read pvd->ppe[i] past the end of the allocation (up to 65535 entries, ~2 MB out of bounds).

The partition scan runs without mounting anything, when a block device with a crafted AIX/IBM partition table appears (an attacker-supplied image attached with losetup -P, or a device auto-scanned by udev), via msdos_partition() -> aix_partition(). Clamp the scan to the number of entries the ppe[] array can hold.

When the kernel scans this device, the `aix_partition()` function reads an unvalidated `pp_count` value, causing it to read beyond the allocated buffer. This out-of-bounds read can lead to information disclosure, potentially revealing sensitive kernel memory, and may also result in a denial of service.