Bug 2516379 (CVE-2026-72185)

Summary: CVE-2026-72185 kernel: ntfs: fix WARN_ON for resident attribute in ntfs_map_runlist_nolock()
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
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's NTFS filesystem driver. A specially crafted NTFS image could cause the system to incorrectly process attribute data during mounting. This could lead to a kernel warning and corruption of internal data structures, potentially resulting in system instability or a denial of service (DoS) by preventing the image from being mounted.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:09:25 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ntfs: fix WARN_ON for resident attribute in ntfs_map_runlist_nolock()

When ntfs_map_runlist_nolock() needs to look up the attribute extent
containing a target VCN (ctx_needs_reset == true), it calls
ntfs_attr_lookup() and then expects the result to be a non-resident
attribute, since only non-resident attributes have a mapping pairs
array to decompress.

A crafted NTFS image can place a resident attribute where a non-resident
one is expected, causing ntfs_attr_lookup() to succeed but return a
resident attribute record.  Previously this was caught only by a
WARN_ON(), which does not stop execution.  The code then falls through to
read a->data.non_resident.highest_vcn from what is actually a resident
attribute, accessing the wrong union member and corrupting the VCN range
check.

The caller path triggering this warning during mount is:

  ntfs_map_runlist_nolock
  ntfs_empty_logfile
  load_system_files
  ntfs_fill_super

In this path ctx is NULL, so ntfs_map_runlist_nolock() allocates a
temporary search context internally and sets ctx_needs_reset = true.
The existing resident-attribute guard in the ctx != NULL branch already
returns -EIO silently for the same condition; make the ctx_needs_reset
path consistent by replacing the WARN_ON() with the same -EIO error
return.

This causes the crafted image to be rejected with a mount error instead
of triggering a kernel warning.