Bug 2429057 (CVE-2025-68821)

Summary: CVE-2025-68821 kernel: Linux kernel FUSE: Denial of Service via readahead reclaim deadlock
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
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Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) subsystem. This vulnerability allows a local attacker to cause a system-wide deadlock. The flaw occurs due to incorrect handling of inode references during readahead operations when the FUSE server does not implement the `open` function. This can lead to a Denial of Service (DoS) as the system becomes unresponsive.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-01-13 16:03:40 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

fuse: fix readahead reclaim deadlock

Commit e26ee4efbc79 ("fuse: allocate ff->release_args only if release is
needed") skips allocating ff->release_args if the server does not
implement open. However in doing so, fuse_prepare_release() now skips
grabbing the reference on the inode, which makes it possible for an
inode to be evicted from the dcache while there are inflight readahead
requests. This causes a deadlock if the server triggers reclaim while
servicing the readahead request and reclaim attempts to evict the inode
of the file being read ahead. Since the folio is locked during
readahead, when reclaim evicts the fuse inode and fuse_evict_inode()
attempts to remove all folios associated with the inode from the page
cache (truncate_inode_pages_range()), reclaim will block forever waiting
for the lock since readahead cannot relinquish the lock because it is
itself blocked in reclaim:

>>> stack_trace(1504735)
 folio_wait_bit_common (mm/filemap.c:1308:4)
 folio_lock (./include/linux/pagemap.h:1052:3)
 truncate_inode_pages_range (mm/truncate.c:336:10)
 fuse_evict_inode (fs/fuse/inode.c:161:2)
 evict (fs/inode.c:704:3)
 dentry_unlink_inode (fs/dcache.c:412:3)
 __dentry_kill (fs/dcache.c:615:3)
 shrink_kill (fs/dcache.c:1060:12)
 shrink_dentry_list (fs/dcache.c:1087:3)
 prune_dcache_sb (fs/dcache.c:1168:2)
 super_cache_scan (fs/super.c:221:10)
 do_shrink_slab (mm/shrinker.c:435:9)
 shrink_slab (mm/shrinker.c:626:10)
 shrink_node (mm/vmscan.c:5951:2)
 shrink_zones (mm/vmscan.c:6195:3)
 do_try_to_free_pages (mm/vmscan.c:6257:3)
 do_swap_page (mm/memory.c:4136:11)
 handle_pte_fault (mm/memory.c:5562:10)
 handle_mm_fault (mm/memory.c:5870:9)
 do_user_addr_fault (arch/x86/mm/fault.c:1338:10)
 handle_page_fault (arch/x86/mm/fault.c:1481:3)
 exc_page_fault (arch/x86/mm/fault.c:1539:2)
 asm_exc_page_fault+0x22/0x27

Fix this deadlock by allocating ff->release_args and grabbing the
reference on the inode when preparing the file for release even if the
server does not implement open. The inode reference will be dropped when
the last reference on the fuse file is dropped (see fuse_file_put() ->
fuse_release_end()).