CVE-2026-53341

Status: UPDATED  |  Advisory ID: CVE-2026-53341

Key Details

Affected Products, Subsystems & Sectors

What to Know

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

fhandle: fix UAF due to unlocked ->mnt_ns read in may_decode_fh()

may_decode_fh() accesses mount::mnt_ns without holding any locks; that

means the mount can concurrently be unmounted, and the mnt_namespace can

concurrently be freed after an RCU grace period.

This race can happens as follows, assuming that the mount point was

created by open_tree(..., OPEN_TREE_CLONE):

thread 1 thread 2 RCU

__do_sys_open_by_handle_at

do_handle_open

handle_to_path

may_decode_fh

is_mounted

[mount::mnt_ns access]

[mount::mnt_ns access]

__do_sys_close

fput_close_sync

__fput

dissolve_on_fput

umount_tree

class_namespace_excl_destructor

namespace_unlock

free_mnt_ns

mnt_ns_tree_remove

call_rcu(mnt_ns_release_rcu)

mnt_ns_release_rcu

mnt_ns_release

kfree

[mnt_namespace::user_ns access] **UAF**

Fix it by taking rcu_read_lock() around the mount::mnt_ns access, like

in __prepend_path().

Additionally, document the semantics of mount::mnt_ns, and use WRITE_ONCE()

for writers that can race with lockless readers.

This bug is unreachable unless one of the following is set:

- CONFIG_PREEMPTION

- CONFIG_RCU_STRICT_GRACE_PERIOD

because it requires an RCU grace period to happen during a syscall without

an explicit preemption.

This doesn't seem to have interesting security impact; worst-case, it could

leak the result of an integer comparison to userspace (from the level

check in cap_capable()), cause an endless loop, or crash the kernel by

dereferencing an invalid address. (NVD)

What to Do

Monitor Linux's web page for any future patch releases.

References