Bug 2516343 (CVE-2026-72188) - CVE-2026-72188 kernel: ntfs: sanitize MFT references returned from ntfs_lookup_inode_by_name()
Summary: CVE-2026-72188 kernel: ntfs: sanitize MFT references returned from ntfs_looku...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-72188
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 06:07 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-09-03 14:10 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:07:32 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ntfs: sanitize MFT references returned from ntfs_lookup_inode_by_name()

ntfs_lookup_inode_by_name() returns MFT references read from directory
index entries on disk. These values are untrusted, but the function can
currently return an error-marked MFT reference to its callers without
validating it.

Callers later decode lookup failures with MREF_ERR(). A crafted NTFS image
can set the MREF error bit while leaving the low bits as an arbitrary
value, causing callers to consume a bogus pseudo-errno instead of treating
the lookup result as corrupted on-disk metadata.

Fix this at the source by normalizing every error-marked MFT reference
returned from ntfs_lookup_inode_by_name() to ERR_MREF(-EIO). Apply this to
all four directory lookup return paths so every caller gets a validated
result without needing additional checks or an API change.

This keeps the sanitization in the common lookup helper, which is cleaner
than duplicating validation in each caller.


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