Bug 2492435 (CVE-2026-53060)

Summary: CVE-2026-53060 kernel: dm cache metadata: fix memory leak on metadata abort retry
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: low Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's device-mapper (dm) cache metadata. This memory leak vulnerability occurs when the `dm_cache_metadata_abort` function fails to acquire the root lock because the block manager is read-only, leading to the improper release of a temporary block manager. A local attacker could exploit this by repeatedly reloading a new table while the metadata is read-only, potentially leading to memory exhaustion and a Denial of Service (DoS).
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-06-24 18:11:56 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

dm cache metadata: fix memory leak on metadata abort retry

When failing to acquire the root_lock in dm_cache_metadata_abort because
the block_manager is read-only, the temporary block_manager created
outside the root_lock is not properly released, causing a memory leak.

Reproduce steps:

This can be reproduced by reloading a new table while the metadata
is read-only. While the second call to dm_cache_metadata_abort is
caused by lack of support for table preload in dm-cache, mentioned
in commit 9b1cc9f251af ("dm cache: share cache-metadata object across
inactive and active DM tables"), it exposes the memory leak in
dm_cache_metadata_abort when the function is called multiple times.
Specifically, dm-cache fails to sync the new cache object's mode during
preresume, creating the reproducer condition.

This issue could also occur through concurrent metadata_operation_failed
calls due to races in cache mode updates, but the table preload scenario
below provides a reliable reproducer.

1. Create a cache device with some faulty trailing metadata blocks

dmsetup create cmeta <<EOF
0 200 linear /dev/sdc 0
200 7992 error
EOF
dmsetup create cdata --table "0 131072 linear /dev/sdc 8192"
dmsetup create corig --table "0 262144 linear /dev/sdc 262144"
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/cmeta bs=4k count=1 oflag=direct
dmsetup create cache --table "0 131072 cache /dev/mapper/cmeta \
/dev/mapper/cdata /dev/mapper/corig 128 1 writethrough smq 0"

2. Suspend and resume the cache to start a new metadata transaction and
   trigger metadata io errors on the next metadata commit.

dmsetup suspend cache
dmsetup resume cache

3. Write to the cache device to update metadata

fio --filename=/dev/mapper/cache --name test --rw=randwrite --bs=4k \
--randrepeat=0 --direct=1 --size 64k

4. Preload the same table

dmsetup reload cache --table "$(dmsetup table cache)"

5. Resume the new table. This triggers the memory leak.

dmsetup suspend cache
dmsetup resume cache

kmemleak logs:

<snip>
unreferenced object 0xffff8880080c2010 (size 16):
  comm "dmsetup", pid 132, jiffies 4294982580
  hex dump (first 16 bytes):
    00 38 b9 07 80 88 ff ff 6a 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b a5 ...
  backtrace (crc 3118f31c):
    kmemleak_alloc+0x28/0x40
    __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x3d9/0x510
    dm_block_manager_create+0x51/0x140
    dm_cache_metadata_abort+0x85/0x320
    metadata_operation_failed+0x103/0x1e0
    cache_preresume+0xacd/0xe70
    dm_table_resume_targets+0xd3/0x320
    __dm_resume+0x1b/0xf0
    dm_resume+0x127/0x170
<snip>

Comment 1 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2026-06-26 11:12:40 UTC
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2026062402-CVE-2026-53060-51d9@gregkh/T