Bug 2513320 (CVE-2026-68149)

Summary: CVE-2026-68149 kernel: fs: preserve ACL_DONT_CACHE state in forget_cached_acl()
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security <prodsec-ir-bot>
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Priority: medium    
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. The `forget_cached_acl()` helper function, intended to manage Access Control List (ACL) caching, incorrectly invalidates the `ACL_DONT_CACHE` state. This can lead to a Fuse (Filesystem in Userspace) filesystem returning stale cached ACL values. Consequently, this could result in incorrect access decisions or unintended information disclosure regarding file permissions.
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-10 12:30:49 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

fs: preserve ACL_DONT_CACHE state in forget_cached_acl()

The ACL_DONT_CACHE state is meant to be a constant state for the inode
for filesystems that want to opt out of posix acl caching.

Commit facd61053cff1 ("fuse: fixes after adapting to new posix acl api")
used this facility to opt out of posix acl caching for fuse inodes with
fuse server that does not negotiate FUSE_POSIX_ACL (fc->posix_acl).

The commit also takes care to gate the forget_all_cached_acls() call in
fuse_set_acl() on fc->posix_acl because there is no need for it, but
there are other placed in fuse code which call forget_all_cached_acls()
unconditional to fc->posix_acl and those cause the loss of the
ACL_DONT_CACHE state.

This is not only a functional bug. Properly timed, a get_acl() from this
fuse filesystem can return a stale cached value, as was observed in tests,
because set_acl() does not invalidate the unintentional acl cache.

We could fix this in fuse, but it actually makes no sense for the vfs
helper forget_cached_acl() to invalidate the ACL_DONT_CACHE state, so
let it not do that to fix fuse and future users of ACL_DONT_CACHE.