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Linux Kernel EUVDEUVD-2026-59214

| CVE-2026-72315 HIGH
2026-08-15 Linux GHSA-3544-2m6j-7m5r
High
Disputed · 7.8 Vendor: Linux
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Severity by source

Sources disagree (Low–High)
Vendor (Linux) PRIMARY
7.8 HIGH
AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
vuln.today AI
7.0 HIGH

Race condition requires precise concurrent DIO write and unmount timing, warranting AC:H over the vendor-assigned AC:L; PR:L reflects required local authenticated session with CIFS write access.

3.1 AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
4.0 AV:L/AC:H/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
SUSE
2.5 MEDIUM
AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Red Hat
5.5 LOW
qualitative

vuln.today treats the vendor’s rating as authoritative. A higher third-party CVSS (e.g. CISA-ADP) is shown for transparency but does not drive the headline severity.

CVSS VectorVendor: Linux

Attack Vector
Local
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

Lifecycle Timeline

5
Analysis Generated
Aug 17, 2026 - 08:23 vuln.today
CVSS changed
Aug 17, 2026 - 06:22 NVD
7.8 (HIGH)
Patch available
Aug 15, 2026 - 07:20 EUVD
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 05:55 cve.org
HIGH 7.8
CVE Published
Aug 15, 2026 - 05:55 cve.org
UNKNOWN (no severity yet)

DescriptionCVE.org

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.

AnalysisAI

Linux kernel SMB/CIFS client exposes a race condition between direct I/O (DIO) write completion and filesystem unmount that leaves dentry reference counts unreleased, triggering a kernel BUG warning and potential use-after-free condition. Local users with access to CIFS-mounted shares can trigger this by initiating a DIO write and concurrently unmounting the filesystem, allowing the kernel's shrink_dcache_for_umount() to fire before deferred workqueue cleanup has decremented the dentry refcount. With CVSS 7.8 and C:H/I:H/A:H, the theoretical impact is full kernel compromise, though no public exploit and an EPSS of 0.20% (10th percentile) indicate this remains a low-exploitation-probability vulnerability at time of analysis.

Technical ContextAI

The vulnerability resides in the Linux kernel's SMB client (CIFS) subsystem, specifically in the interaction between the netfs direct I/O path and the CIFS superblock teardown sequence. When a DIO write is issued via netfs_unbuffered_write_iter_locked(), write subrequest completion is handled asynchronously by the cifsd kernel thread, which ultimately queues a netfs_put_request work item onto system_dfl_wq. That work item eventually calls _cifsFileInfo_put() and then queues a further item onto fileinfo_put_wq to run cifsFileInfo_put_final(), which calls dput() to release the dentry reference. The existing fix for deferred-close (commit c68337442f03) flushed deferredclose_wq in cifs_kill_sb(), and inode eviction runs ictx->io_count wait in cifs_evict_inode(), but neither intercepts the system_dfl_wq → fileinfo_put_wq chain introduced by the DIO path. The root cause is a missing synchronization barrier in cifs_kill_sb() between kill_anon_super() (which calls shrink_dcache_for_umount() and emits the busy-dentry BUG) and the completion of all outstanding DIO-related request teardown work. The CWE field is unspecified, but this maps to CWE-362 (Concurrent Execution Using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization) and potentially CWE-416 (Use After Free) if the dentry is accessed post-shrink.

RemediationAI

Upgrade the Linux kernel to a patched version: Linux 7.1.5 or later for the 7.1.x stable branch, or 7.2-rc3 or later for mainline, as confirmed by EUVD-2026-59214. For older LTS branches, apply the stable-tree commits f0eac9c3c3711f24efc2aaf12b8ec3e54a38c214 (branch ending at 6.20) or 75f5c412fa867efa0bf9b646bffe0d912109e84a (branch ending before 6.20), available at https://git.kernel.org/stable/. If an immediate kernel upgrade is not feasible, a compensating control is to avoid using the SMB/CIFS direct I/O path: applications can be reconfigured to use buffered I/O (removing O_DIRECT flags), which sidesteps the netfs DIO code path that introduces the dangling dentry reference. This workaround has the trade-off of increased page-cache pressure and reduced I/O performance for latency-sensitive workloads. Additionally, restricting CIFS mount privileges to trusted users via /etc/fstab user-mount controls reduces the pool of principals who can trigger the race. Distribution-specific kernel packages (RHEL, Ubuntu, SUSE) should be monitored for backported fixes to their respective kernel streams.

Vendor StatusVendor

SUSE

Severity: Moderate
Product Status
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 15 SP7 Affected
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension 16.0 Not-Affected

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EUVD-2026-59214 vulnerability details – vuln.today

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