CVE-2026-98990
Received
Received - Intake
Linux Kernel Mount Submount Reference Handling Flaw
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-98990, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-10-23
Last updated on: 2026-10-23
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
namespace: check a submount for references right before unmounting it
shrink_submounts() and mark_mounts_for_expiry() first collect all the
mounts they are allowed to unmount and then unmount them.
Whether a mount is busy is decided by propagate_mount_busy() on the
tree. But unmounting the first mount changes the tree that the second
one propagates into. propagate_umount()
moves a surviving overmount off a copy it unmounts and mounts it where
the copy was mounted. If that's where the propagated copy of the second
victim is looked up the overmount becomes a candidate of the second
umount_tree(). It's childless and so trim_one() commits it without
looking at its reference count.
So a synchronous umount pulls out a busy mount that is in use somewhere
else and marks it MNT_SYNC_UMOUNT while it has users:
umount2(/tmp/plshrink/p1, 0) = 0 errno 0
cwd is (unreachable)
The same two umounts requested one after the other fail with EBUSY.
This needs a mount with MNT_SHRINKABLE, i.e., automounted submounts of
NFS, AFS and CIFS or the tracefs mount below debugfs. Bind mounts
inherit the flag.
Check each mount right before it is unmounted under the same hold of
namespace_sem and mount_lock as the umount itself. Make sure that the
algorithm stays linear.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
| Probability: | |
| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| Linux | Linux | 1064f874abc0d05eeed8993815f584d847b72486 |
| Linux | Linux | 1064f874abc0d05eeed8993815f584d847b72486 |
| Linux | Linux | 1064f874abc0d05eeed8993815f584d847b72486 |
| Linux | Linux | 1064f874abc0d05eeed8993815f584d847b72486 |
| Linux | Linux | 1064f874abc0d05eeed8993815f584d847b72486 |
| Linux | Linux | 5e6ef5ef6eaf690faad3a7c6c665ebf45d7b6ccf |
| Linux | Linux | 839d42687dfce0ed0ea2c6bd8d707cc0e276fbe7 |
| Linux | Linux | 808e83e5add13152bd4a88346487de68395c136b |
| Linux | Linux | 6de9d08a9718ee9c12ba6343c50141c2d633e3dc |
| Linux | Linux | 4.1.40 |
| Linux | Linux | 4.4.54 |
| Linux | Linux | 4.9.15 |
| Linux | Linux | 4.10.3 |
| Linux | Linux | 4.11 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
