CVE-2026-72377
Received
Received - Intake
Memory Corruption in Linux Kernel AFS Filesystem
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-72377, 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:
afs: Remove setting of AS_RELEASE_ALWAYS for symlinks and mountpoints
Regular AFS files correctly use afs_file_aops which have release_folio
set as netfs_release_folio, so AS_RELEASE_ALWAYS is valid for them
when fscache is enabled (set via afs_vnode_set_cache()).
Symlinks and mountpoints in AFS use afs_dir_aops, which does not provide
a release_folio callback. However, afs_apply_status() unconditionally
calls mapping_set_release_always() for these.
In such case when memory management code attempts to release folios,
filemap_release_folio() checks folio_needs_release() which
returns true due to AS_RELEASE_ALWAYS being set. Since there is no
release_folio callback, it falls through to try_to_free_buffers(),
which at present expects buffer_heads to be not null. For symlinks
and mountpoints without buffer_heads, this causes pointer dereference.
[dh: Added more bits that were missed]
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 |
