Bug 2492816 (CVE-2026-53265)

Summary: CVE-2026-53265 kernel: Linux kernel: Denial of service and data corruption in device mapper cache policy via race condition.
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: unspecifiedCC: rhel-process-autobot, watson-tool-maintainers
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's device mapper (DM) cache policy. A race condition exists where two processes attempting to invalidate cache blocks concurrently can lead to memory corruption. This can result in a local denial of service, causing the system to crash, or potentially corrupting storage cache data. A local attacker with access to the cached block device could exploit this vulnerability.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-06-25 10:07:17 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

dm cache policy smq: check allocation under invalidate lock

commit 2d1f7b65f5de ("dm cache policy smq: fix missing locks in
invalidating cache blocks") added mq->lock around the destructive part of
smq_invalidate_mapping(), but left the e->allocated check outside the
critical section.

That leaves a check-then-act race. Two concurrent invalidators can both
observe e->allocated as true before either of them takes mq->lock. The
first invalidator that acquires the lock removes the entry from the
queues and hash table and then calls free_entry(), which clears
e->allocated and puts the entry back on the free list. The second
invalidator can then acquire mq->lock and continue with the stale result
of the unlocked check.

This can corrupt the SMQ queues or hash table by deleting an entry that
is no longer on those structures. It can also hit the allocation check in
free_entry() when the same entry is freed again.

Move the allocation check under mq->lock so the predicate and the
destructive operations are serialized by the same lock.

Comment 1 Mauro Matteo Cascella 2026-06-29 13:49:22 UTC
Upstream advisory:
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2026062517-CVE-2026-53265-35a8@gregkh/T