CVE-2026-53244
Received
Received - Intake
VFS dentry reference leak in Linux kernel
Publication date: 2026-06-25
Last updated on: 2026-06-25
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
VFS: fix possible failure to unlock in nfsd4_create_file()
atomic_create() in fs/namei.c drops the reference to the dentry
when it returns an error.
This behaviour was imported into dentry_create() so that it
will drop the reference if an error is returned from atomic_create(),
though not if vfs_create() returns an error (in the case where
->atomic_create is not supported).
The caller - nfsd4_create_file() - is made aware of this by checking
path->dentry, which will either be a counted reference to a dentry, or
an error pointer.
However the change to use start_creating()/end_creating() (which landed
shortly before the dentry_create() change landed, though was likely
developed around the same time) means that nfsd4_create_file() *needs* a
valid dentry so that it can unlock the parent.
The net result is that if NFSD exports a filesystem which uses
->atomic_create, and if a call to ->atomic_create returns an error, then
nfsd4_create_file() will pass an error pointer to end_creating()
and the parent will not be unlocked.
Fix this by changing dentry_create() to make sure path->dentry is always
a valid dentry, never an error-pointer. The actual error is already
returned a different way.
Note that if ->atomic_create() returns a different dentry (which may not
be possible in practice) we are guaranteed (because it is only ever
provided by d_spliace_alias()) that it will have the same d_parent and
so it will have the same effect when passed to end_creating().
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
| Probability: | |
| Percentile: |
Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| linux_kernel | linux_kernel | * |
| linux | linux_kernel | * |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
