Bug 2516905 (CVE-2026-74359)

Summary: CVE-2026-74359 kernel: configfs_lookup(): don't leave ->s_dentry dangling on failure
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev>
Status: NEW --- QA Contact:
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: high    
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 `configfs` component. This vulnerability occurs because a memory pointer is not properly cleared after a failure, leading to a 'use-after-free' condition. A local attacker could exploit this by interacting with the affected directory, which could cause memory corruption. This could result in a system crash (denial of service) or potentially allow the attacker to execute arbitrary code.
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:39:37 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

configfs_lookup(): don't leave ->s_dentry dangling on failure

Normally ->s_dentry is cleared when dentry it's pointing to becomes
negative (on eviction, realistically).  However, that only happens
if dentry gets to be positive in the first place; in case of inode
allocation failure dentry never becomes positive, so ->d_iput()
is not called at all.

We do part of what normally would've been done by configfs_d_iput()
(dropping the reference to configfs_dirent) manually, but we do
not clear ->s_dentry there.  Sloppy as it is, it does not matter in
case of configfs_create_{dir,link}() - there configfs_dirent does
not survive dropping the sole reference to it.

However, for configfs_lookup() it *does* survive, with a dangling
pointer to soon to be freed dentry sitting it its ->s_dentry.

Subsequent getdents(2) in that directory will end up dereferencing
that pointer in order to pick the inode number.  Use after free...

This is the minimal fix; the right approach is to set the linkage
between dentry and configfs_dirent only after we know that we have
an inode, but that takes more surgery and the bug had been there
since 2006, so...