CVE-2026-53341

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

fhandle: fix UAF due to unlocked ->mnt_ns read in may_decode_fh()

may_decode_fh() accesses mount::mnt_ns without holding any locks; that means the mount can concurrently be unmounted, and the mnt_namespace can concurrently be freed after an RCU grace period.

This race can happens as follows, assuming that the mount point was created by open_tree(…, OPEN_TREE_CLONE):

thread 1 thread 2 RCU __do_sys_open_by_handle_at do_handle_open handle_to_path may_decode_fh is_mounted [mount::mnt_ns access] [mount::mnt_ns access] __do_sys_close fput_close_sync __fput dissolve_on_fput umount_tree class_namespace_excl_destructor namespace_unlock free_mnt_ns mnt_ns_tree_remove call_rcu(mnt_ns_release_rcu) mnt_ns_release_rcu mnt_ns_release kfree [mnt_namespace::user_ns access] UAF

Fix it by taking rcu_read_lock() around the mount::mnt_ns access, like in __prepend_path(). Additionally, document the semantics of mount::mnt_ns, and use WRITE_ONCE() for writers that can race with lockless readers.

This bug is unreachable unless one of the following is set:

• CONFIG_PREEMPTION
• CONFIG_RCU_STRICT_GRACE_PERIOD

because it requires an RCU grace period to happen during a syscall without an explicit preemption.

This doesn't seem to have interesting security impact; worst-case, it could leak the result of an integer comparison to userspace (from the level check in cap_capable()), cause an endless loop, or crash the kernel by dereferencing an invalid address.

Affected Software

Weaknesses

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/15ea8dc42a02259d49dee38a658d40f60fcd75ed
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/32138633e51e6db59e474765cf93268c92b42888
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a8ed2c29fcfdac78db96c9da4e659c8a513f2a94
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/40ab6644b99685755f740b872c00ef40d9aa870e

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