Bug 2516651 (CVE-2026-72193) - CVE-2026-72193 kernel: ntfs3: cap RESTART_TABLE free-chain walker at rt->used
Summary: CVE-2026-72193 kernel: ntfs3: cap RESTART_TABLE free-chain walker at rt->used
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-72193
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 06:24 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-08-18 14:54 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:24:01 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

ntfs3: cap RESTART_TABLE free-chain walker at rt->used

A crafted NTFS3 disk image triggers an in-kernel infinite loop at
mount time, hanging the mounting thread and firing the soft-lockup
watchdog within ~22s on multi-CPU hosts (panic with
kernel.softlockup_panic=1).  The bug is reachable from desktop USB
auto-mount on distributions where udisks2 routes the NTFS signature
to the in-tree ntfs3 driver (Arch family and an increasing fraction
of Fedora / openSUSE / RHEL deployments); CAP_SYS_ADMIN-class manual
mount elsewhere.

check_rstbl()'s second walker iterates the free-entry singly-linked
list headed by rt->first_free with no upper bound on iteration count:

  for (off = ff; off;) {
      if (off == RESTART_ENTRY_ALLOCATED)
          return false;
      off = le32_to_cpu(*(__le32 *)Add2Ptr(rt, off));
      if (off > ts - sizeof(__le32))
          return false;
  }

The existing guards cover three exits: end-of-list (off == 0), the
in-use marker (off == RESTART_ENTRY_ALLOCATED), and out-of-bounds
(off > ts - sizeof(__le32)).  None of the three prevents an
in-bounds cycle.

A crafted on-disk RESTART_TABLE whose free chain contains a
self-loop or A->B->A cycle whose offsets satisfy:

  - in range [sizeof(struct RESTART_TABLE), ts - sizeof(__le32)]
  - (off - sizeof(struct RESTART_TABLE)) % rsize == 0

passes all existing guards and spins the mount-time thread forever.
Reproduced in UML by hand-forging a 2 MB NTFS3 image whose journal
RESTART_TABLE first_free = 0x18 and whose entry at offset 0x18
stores 0x18 as its next pointer; mount of the forged image with
the in-tree ntfs3 driver never returns.

Bound the walker by rt->used.  Each entry on a legitimate free
chain is unique, and the total slot count is ne = le16_to_cpu
(rt->used).  A traversal that visits more than ne slots is by
construction malformed; reject it as a corrupt RESTART_TABLE.

After this patch, mount of the forged image returns with -EINVAL
and a log_replay failure message, and mkntfs-produced legitimate
images mount cleanly (verified in the same UML harness).


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