CVE-2026-72316
Received
Received - Intake
NULL Pointer Dereference in Linux Kernel Device Mapper Era
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-72316, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-08-15
Last updated on: 2026-08-15
Assigner: kernel.org
Description
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
dm era: fix NULL pointer dereference in metadata_open()
metadata_open() returns NULL when kzalloc_obj() fails, but the
caller era_ctr() only checks IS_ERR(md). Since IS_ERR(NULL)
returns false, the NULL pointer is treated as a valid result
and later assigned to era->md, leading to a NULL pointer
dereference when the metadata is accessed.
Fix this by returning ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM) on allocation failure,
consistent with dm-cache-metadata.c, dm-thin-metadata.c, and
dm-clone-metadata.c which all use ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM) for the
same pattern.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| linux | linux_kernel | * |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-UNKNOWN |
