Bug 2429083 (CVE-2025-71072)

Summary: CVE-2025-71072 kernel: shmem: fix recovery on rename failures
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
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Version: unspecifiedKeywords: Security
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OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's shmem (tmpfs) filesystem rename operation. Under severe memory pressure, the maple_tree insertion used during file rename can fail, and the error recovery path does not properly handle this failure. This can leave the filesystem directory offset tree in an inconsistent state.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-01-13 16:05:33 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

shmem: fix recovery on rename failures

maple_tree insertions can fail if we are seriously short on memory;
simple_offset_rename() does not recover well if it runs into that.
The same goes for simple_offset_rename_exchange().

Moreover, shmem_whiteout() expects that if it succeeds, the caller will
progress to d_move(), i.e. that shmem_rename2() won't fail past the
successful call of shmem_whiteout().

Not hard to fix, fortunately - mtree_store() can't fail if the index we
are trying to store into is already present in the tree as a singleton.

For simple_offset_rename_exchange() that's enough - we just need to be
careful about the order of operations.

For simple_offset_rename() solution is to preinsert the target into the
tree for new_dir; the rest can be done without any potentially failing
operations.

That preinsertion has to be done in shmem_rename2() rather than in
simple_offset_rename() itself - otherwise we'd need to deal with the
possibility of failure after successful shmem_whiteout().