Bug 2532416 (CVE-2026-89767)
| Summary: | CVE-2026-89767 kernel: ovl: fix double end_creating() on the casefold-mismatch path | ||
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| Product: | [Other] Security Response | Reporter: | OSIDB Bzimport <bzimport> |
| Component: | vulnerability | Assignee: | Product Security DevOps Team <prodsec-dev> |
| Status: | NEW --- | QA Contact: | |
| Severity: | medium | Docs Contact: | |
| Priority: | medium | ||
| Version: | unspecified | CC: | akhatavk, aos-team-art-private, asdas, dpaolell, jdelft, jupierce, lgarciaa, mbiarnes, ppalepu, ppostler, prdhamdh, rhel-process-autobot, sghai, sidsharm, suppawar, vlaad, watson-tool-maintainers |
| Target Milestone: | --- | Keywords: | Security |
| Target Release: | --- | ||
| Hardware: | All | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Whiteboard: | |||
| Fixed In Version: | Doc Type: | --- | |
| Doc Text: |
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's overlay file system (overlayfs). An unprivileged local user can trigger a specific error condition during the creation of a new directory. This error causes the system to incorrectly release a lock on the parent directory and a reference to the new directory entry twice. This double release can lead to subsequent attempts to create directories under the same parent to become unresponsive, effectively causing a denial of service (DoS) for those operations.
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Story Points: | --- |
| Clone Of: | Environment: | ||
| Last Closed: | Type: | --- | |
| Regression: | --- | Mount Type: | --- |
| Documentation: | --- | CRM: | |
| Verified Versions: | Category: | --- | |
| oVirt Team: | --- | RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host: | |
| Cloudforms Team: | --- | Target Upstream Version: | |
| Embargoed: | |||
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ovl: fix double end_creating() on the casefold-mismatch path ovl_create_real() releases the new dentry twice when the casefold consistency check fails. The S_IFDIR branch calls end_creating() and sets err, then falls through to the common out: label which calls end_creating() on the same dentry again: case S_IFDIR: newdentry = ovl_do_mkdir(ofs, dir, newdentry, attr->mode); err = PTR_ERR_OR_ZERO(newdentry); if (!err && ofs->casefold != ovl_dentry_casefolded(newdentry)) { pr_warn_ratelimited(...); end_creating(newdentry); /* first */ err = -EINVAL; } break; ... if (err) goto out; ... out: if (err) { end_creating(newdentry); /* second, same dentry */ return ERR_PTR(err); } end_creating() is end_dirop(), which does inode_unlock() on the parent and dput() on the dentry, so the parent directory's i_rwsem is unlocked twice and the dentry is put twice. The second unlock releases a lock that is not held, which is what wedges every later creation under that parent, and the second dput() drops a reference that was never taken. The branch was added by commit dfc7da402ccc ("ovl: Check for casefold consistency when creating new dentries") as a bare dput(), which already released the reference twice; commit fe497f0759e0 ("VFS: change vfs_mkdir() to unlock on failure.") converted both sites to end_creating(), adding the double unlock. This is reachable by an unprivileged user. The casefold consistency of the layers is validated at mount time in ovl_parse_layer(), and again on every lookup in ovl_lookup_single(), but ofs->workdir is the internal "work" subdirectory created inside the user-supplied workdir, and that subdirectory is not re-checked. Marking it casefolded after the mount therefore makes every ovl_create_temp() inherit the wrong state - and that path reaches ovl_create_real() through ovl_start_creating_temp(), which uses start_creating() with a generated name and so never runs the lookup-time check. unshare -Urm mount -t tmpfs -o casefold=utf8-12.1.0 tmpfs mnt mkdir -p mnt/lower/d mnt/upper mnt/work mnt/merged mount -t overlay ovl -o lowerdir=mnt/lower,\ upperdir=mnt/upper,workdir=mnt/work mnt/merged chattr +F mnt/work/work mkdir mnt/merged/d/sub # directory copy-up overlayfs: wrong inherited casefold (work/#5) and the next copy-up blocks forever on the parent's i_rwsem: mkdir D start_creating+0x65/0xb0 ovl_start_creating_temp+0xb0/0xe0 [overlay] ovl_create_temp+0xa3/0x1d0 [overlay] ovl_copy_up_one+0x1f1c/0x21c0 [overlay] ovl_copy_up_flags+0xf5/0x140 [overlay] ovl_create_object+0xb7/0x220 [overlay] ovl_mkdir+0x23/0x40 [overlay] Drop the end_creating() from the branch and let out: own the cleanup, which is what every other error path in this function already does.