Bug 2516867 (CVE-2026-74343) - CVE-2026-74343 kernel: kernfs: fix xattr race condition with multiple superblocks
Summary: CVE-2026-74343 kernel: kernfs: fix xattr race condition with multiple superbl...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-74343
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 06:37 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-08-20 18:14 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-08-15 06:37:37 UTC
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

kernfs: fix xattr race condition with multiple superblocks

Multiple superblocks with different namespaces can share the same
kernfs_node when kernfs_test_super() finds a matching root but
different namespace. This means multiple inodes from different
superblocks can reference the same kernfs_node->iattr->xattrs
structure.

The VFS layer only holds per-inode locks during xattr operations,
which is insufficient to serialize concurrent xattr modifications on
the shared kernfs_node. This can lead to race conditions in
simple_xattr_set() where the lookup->replace/remove sequence is not
atomic with respect to operations from other superblocks.

Fix this by protecting xattr operations with the existing hashed
kernfs_locks->open_file_mutex[] array, which is already used to
protect per-node open file data. The hashed mutex array provides
scalable per-node serialization (scaled by CPU count, up to 1024 locks
on 32+ CPU systems) with zero memory overhead.

Changes:
- Rename open_file_mutex[] to node_mutex[] to reflect dual purpose
- Add kernfs_node_lock_ptr() and kernfs_node_lock() helpers
- Protect simple_xattr_set() calls in kernfs_xattr_set() and
  kernfs_vfs_user_xattr_set() with the hashed mutex
- Update file.c to use new helpers via compatibility wrappers
- Update documentation to explain the extended lock usage


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