The ext4_valid_block_bitmap function in fs/ext4/balloc.c in the Linux kernel through 4.15.15 allows attackers to cause a denial of service (out-of-bounds read and system crash) via a crafted ext4 image because balloc.c and ialloc.c do not validate bitmap block numbers. Wen Xu discovered that the ext4 filesystem implementation in the Linux kernel did not properly handle corrupted meta data in some situations. An attacker could use this to specially craft an ext4 filesystem that caused a denial of service (system crash) when mounted.