Bug 2516297 (CVE-2026-72377) - CVE-2026-72377 kernel: afs: Remove setting of AS_RELEASE_ALWAYS for symlinks and mountpoints
Summary: CVE-2026-72377 kernel: afs: Remove setting of AS_RELEASE_ALWAYS for symlinks ...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-72377
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-08-15 06:05 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-08-18 05:57 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:05:08 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

afs: Remove setting of AS_RELEASE_ALWAYS for symlinks and mountpoints

Regular AFS files correctly use afs_file_aops which have release_folio
set as netfs_release_folio, so AS_RELEASE_ALWAYS is valid for them
when fscache is enabled (set via afs_vnode_set_cache()).
Symlinks and mountpoints in AFS use afs_dir_aops, which does not provide
a release_folio callback. However, afs_apply_status() unconditionally
calls mapping_set_release_always() for these.

In such case when memory management code attempts to release folios,
filemap_release_folio() checks folio_needs_release() which
returns true due to AS_RELEASE_ALWAYS being set. Since there is no
release_folio callback, it falls through to try_to_free_buffers(),
which at present expects buffer_heads to be not null. For symlinks
and mountpoints without buffer_heads, this causes pointer dereference.

[dh: Added more bits that were missed]


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