Linux Kernel CIFS cifs_kill_sb race condition

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability labeled as problematic has been found in Linux Kernel. This affects the function cifs_kill_sb of the component CIFS. Such manipulation leads to race condition. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-72315. The attack can be launched remotely. No exploit exists.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Linux Kernel (the affected version unknown) and classified as problematic. Affected by this issue is the function cifs_kill_sb of the component CIFS. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a race condition vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-362. The product contains a code sequence that can run concurrently with other code, and the code sequence requires temporary, exclusive access to a shared resource, but a timing window exists in which the shared resource can be modified by another code sequence that is operating concurrently. Impacted is integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: smb: client: fix busy dentry warning on unmount after DIO Commit c68337442f03 ("cifs: Fix busy dentry used after unmounting") fixed the issue in cifs where deferred close of a file led to a dentry reference count not being released in umount, by flushing deferredclose_wq in cifs_kill_sb() to solve it. However, the cifs DIO path suffers from the same busy-dentry problem caused by a delayed dentry reference-count release: [dio] [cifsd] [close + umount] netfs_unbuffered_write_iter_locked ... cifs_demultiplex_thread netfs_unbuffered_write cifs_issue_write netfs_wait_for_in_progress_stream [1] ... netfs_write_subrequest_terminated netfs_subreq_clear_in_progress netfs_wake_collector // wake [1] netfs_put_subrequest netfs_put_request queue_work(system_dfl_wq, xxx) [2] // dio write return cifs_close _cifsFileInfo_put // cfile->count 2->1 --cfile->count [3] // umount cifs_kill_sb kill_anon_super // warning triggered! shrink_dcache_for_umount [4] [system_dfl_wq] [5] netfs_free_request ... _cifsFileInfo_put // cfile->count 1->0 --cfile->count queue_work(fileinfo_put_wq, xxx) [fileinfo_put_wq] [6] cifsFileInfo_put_work cifsFileInfo_put_final dput If the umount path is triggered before [5], it results warning: BUG: Dentry 00000000eab1f070{i=9a917b66ae404fec,n=test} still in use (1) [unmount of cifs cifs] The existing per-inode ictx->io_count wait in cifs_evict_inode() does not help: it lives in the inode eviction path, which runs after shrink_dcache_for_umount() has already warned about the busy dentries. Fix it by adding a per-superblock outstanding-rreq counter that is incremented in cifs_init_request() and decremented in cifs_free_request(). In cifs_kill_sb(), before kill_anon_super(), wait for this counter to reach 0 - which guarantees that all cleanup_work for this sb have run and thus all relevant cfile puts are queued on fileinfo_put_wq or serverclose_wq. Then drain the workqueue so the dentry refs are dropped. This is a targeted wait, not a flush of the system-wide system_dfl_wq.

The advisory is available at git.kernel.org. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2026-72315 since 08/09/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be launched remotely. Additional levels of successful authentication are required for exploitation. Successful exploitation requires user interaction by the victim. Technical details are known, but there is no available exploit.

Applying the patch f0eac9c3c3711f24efc2aaf12b8ec3e54a38c214 is able to eliminate this problem.

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Productinfo

Type

• Operating System

Vendor

• Linux

Name

• Kernel

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.kernel.org/

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CPE 2.2info

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If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

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