Bug 2516482 (CVE-2026-72103)

Summary: CVE-2026-72103 kernel: dm: avoid leaking the caller's thread keyring via the table device file
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
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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's device-mapper (dm) component. A refactoring error caused the caller's thread keyring, which can contain sensitive data like LUKS volume keys, to persist in memory longer than intended. This issue allows a local attacker with administrative privileges to recover LUKS volume keys from system memory after a `cryptsetup luksSuspend` operation, which is designed to wipe these keys. This leads to an information disclosure vulnerability, compromising the confidentiality of encrypted data.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:14:49 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

dm: avoid leaking the caller's thread keyring via the table device file

The refactoring in commit a28d893eb327 ("md: port block device access to file")
accidentally causes the caller's thread keyring to be kept alive long
beyond the caller's lifetime.

As a result, "cryptsetup luksSuspend" silently fails to wipe the
LUKS volume key from memory.

In detail: "cryptsetup luksOpen" uses its supposedly ephemeral thread
keyring to pass the volume key to the kernel. dm-crypt's
crypt_set_keyring_key() copies the key material into its own
crypt_config structure and then drops its own reference to the key in
the keyring with key_put().

With this fix, restoring pre-v6.9 behavior, the copy in the thread
keyring is then promptly garbage collected, such that exactly one copy
of the volume key remains. This single copy is correctly wiped from
memory on "cryptsetup luksSuspend".

Without this fix, the thread keyring and the volume key in it remains.
This second copy is only freed on "luksClose". "luksSuspend" neither
knows about this copy nor has any way to remove it, so the key remains
recoverable from RAM after a suspend that is documented to have wiped it.

This fix should not introduce new security problems, as the code is
anyway gated by CAP_SYS_ADMIN. The device-mapper core, not the calling
task, is the legitimate owner of this long-lived file.