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CVE-2026-98979EUVD-2026-108773GHSA-XHGJ-MP6G-FW2X

namespace: refuse an automount below a mount that is in no namespace

Published
Last modified
published
Not listed in CISA KEV
Fix
Fixed in 6.6.160, 6.12.113, 6.18.57, 7.2.11
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub

Summary

The Linux kernel's mount handling code is affected, specifically how it processes automounts beneath mounts that are not part of any mount namespace. An unprivileged user who can reach such a path through fanotify could trigger a kernel crash (general protection fault), which can halt mount operations system-wide and effectively cause a denial of service.

Summarized by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5. Verify details against the original sources.

Read the original description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: namespace: refuse an automount below a mount that is in no namespace It's possible to add autmounts even when the parent mount isn't in the mount namespace of the caller. The only requirement we have is that the parent mount namespace must not be NULL, i.e., unmounted. Problem is that clone_private_mount() has MNT_NS_INTERNAL which makes that trivially true. So that passes the test and attach_recursive_mnt() accepts that as a mount point and funny enough, count_mounts() dereferences MNT_NS_INTERNAL. The problem is it is an error pointer... So we can reach this in userspace via fanotify. A filesystem mark on the lower filesystem of an overlay reports paths on the layer clone and reading the event hands out a descriptor on it. For example with debugfs as the lower layer it goes kaboom: openat(evfd, "tracing", O_DIRECTORY) Oops: general protection fault KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x1d0-0x1d7] RIP: 0010:count_mounts+0x35/0x200 attach_recursive_mnt finish_automount And since that sleeping beauty happens under namespace_sem held for writing every mount operation on the system blocks from then on. Congrats. Use is_mounted() instead which rejects unmounted and internal mounts alike. The open fails with EINVAL just as it did before clone_private_mount() used MNT_NS_INTERNAL.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. First seen by cve.now
  3. Record last updated

Affected versions

  • Linux Linux

    Version range not reported

  • Linux Linux

    5.8

  • KernelLinux

    From 5.8.0 · fixed in 6.6.160; From 6.7.0 · fixed in 6.12.113; From 6.13.0 · fixed in 6.18.57; From 6.19.0 · fixed in 7.2.11

References 8

git.kernel.org