Vulnerabilities
- CVSS
- 5.5 Medium
- Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H- EPSS
- 0.17%
- Risk score
- 3.5
- Published
- 2026-08-15
- Status
- Published
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
binfmt_misc: don't leak the user namespace when the mount fails
bm_get_tree() takes a reference to the user namespace and hands it to
get_tree_keyed() as the sget key. sget_fc() moves that reference into
sb->s_fs_info and clears fc->s_fs_info, so from that point on the
superblock owns it and bm_free() doesn't see it anymore.
The superblock drops it in ->put_super(). But generic_shutdown_super()
only calls ->put_super() from inside the if (sb->s_root) branch, so
nothing releases it when bm_fill_super() fails:
- The kzalloc_obj() failure leaves s_root NULL and the whole branch is
skipped.
- A simple_fill_super() failure in the file loop leaves s_root set, but
s_op still points at simple_super_operations, which has no
->put_super(). bm_fill_super() installs s_ops only once
simple_fill_super() returned success, and installing it earlier
wouldn't help either because simple_fill_super() overwrites s_op.
Either way vfs_get_super() calls deactivate_locked_super() and the
reference is gone for good. binfmt_misc mounts are available in a user
namespace and both the inode and the dentry cache are SLAB_ACCOUNT, so
an unprivileged caller under a tight memory cgroup can fail
simple_fill_super() on demand and leak one user namespace per attempt.
Drop the reference in ->kill_sb() instead, which runs unconditionally,
the same way nfsd and rpc_pipefs release their keyed s_fs_info.
That also stops ->put_super() from clearing s_fs_info while the
superblock is still on @fs_supers. generic_shutdown_super() leaves it
there on purpose so that sget_fc() keeps finding it until kill_sb() has
run, but a NULL s_fs_info makes test_keyed_super() miss it, so a
concurrent mount for the same user namespace skips the grab_super()
wait and creates a second superblock for a namespace that is still
being torn down.
A flaw was found in the `binfmt_misc` component of the Linux kernel. An unprivileged local attacker, operating under specific memory constraints (a tight memory cgroup), could repeatedly trigger a failure in the `bm_fill_super()` function during a mount operation. This failure prevents the proper release of a user namespace reference, leading to a leak of one user namespace per attempt. This resource exhaustion can result in a denial of service (DoS) for the system.
Coverage 1
threat-intel
Multiple vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel of Debian. These vulnerabilities allow for privilege escalation, data compromise, and denial of service. The affected Debian versions are prior to 6.12.10…
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