CVE-2026-72368

Summary

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

cachefiles: Fix double unlock in nomem_d_alloc error path

When start_creating() fails and returns -ENOMEM, it has already released the parent directory lock in __start_dirop():

static struct dentry *__start_dirop(...)
{
    ...
    inode_lock_nested(dir, I_MUTEX_PARENT);
    dentry = lookup_one_qstr_excl(name, parent, lookup_flags);
    if (IS_ERR(dentry))
        inode_unlock(dir);  <-- Lock released on error
    return dentry;
}

However, the nomem_d_alloc error path in cachefiles_get_directory() unconditionally calls inode_unlock(d_inode(dir)) again, causing a double unlock that corrupts the rwsem state.

This is a leftover from commit 7ab96df840e60 which replaced manual locking with start_creating() but failed to update the nomem_d_alloc path (while correctly updating mkdir_error and lookup_error paths).

Affected Software

VendorProductVersion RangeStatus
LinuxLinux7ab96df840e60eb933abfe65fc5fe44e72f16dc0 < 26757dac15175f2a42e3537f1ba86e62456d48f1affected
LinuxLinux7ab96df840e60eb933abfe65fc5fe44e72f16dc0 < 8c256fba2b46020004201c500b2a1fbc707a33efaffected
LinuxLinux6.19affected
LinuxLinux0 < 6.19unaffected
LinuxLinux7.1.5 <= 7.1.*unaffected
LinuxLinux7.2 <= *unaffected

Weaknesses

References