{
  "schemaVersion": 1,
  "attribution": [
    {
      "source": "CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities",
      "url": "https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog",
      "licence": "US government work"
    },
    {
      "source": "GitHub Advisory Database",
      "url": "https://github.com/advisories",
      "licence": "CC BY 4.0"
    },
    {
      "source": "Have I Been Pwned",
      "url": "https://haveibeenpwned.com/",
      "licence": "CC BY 4.0"
    },
    {
      "source": "CVE Program (CVE records)",
      "url": "https://www.cve.org/Legal/TermsOfUse",
      "licence": "CVE Terms of Use",
      "notice": "Copyright © 1999-2026, The MITRE Corporation. CVE is a trademark and the CVE logo is a registered trademark of The MITRE Corporation.",
      "terms": "CVE Usage: MITRE hereby grants you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable copyright license to reproduce, prepare derivative works of, publicly display, publicly perform, sublicense, and distribute Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE™). Any copy you make for such purposes is authorized provided that you reproduce MITRE's copyright designation and this license in any such copy."
    },
    {
      "source": "FIRST EPSS",
      "url": "https://www.first.org/epss/",
      "licence": "free to use; FIRST requests attribution"
    }
  ],
  "record": {
    "id": "CVE-2026-98981",
    "sourceURL": "https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-98981",
    "idYear": 2026,
    "status": "PUBLISHED",
    "publishedAt": "2026-10-23T12:19:58.507Z",
    "updatedAt": "2026-10-23T12:19:58.507Z",
    "importedAt": "2026-10-24T01:58:41.756Z",
    "snapshot": {
      "id": "cve_2026-10-24_midnight_baseline",
      "at": "2026-10-24T00:00:00.000Z",
      "source": "https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/releases/tag/cve_2026-10-24_0100Z"
    },
    "facts": {
      "title": "namespace: unhash a dentry before detaching the mounts on it",
      "summary": "In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:\n\nnamespace: unhash a dentry before detaching the mounts on it\n\nunlink(), rmdir() and rename() remove the entry from the filesystem,\ncall detach_mounts() on the entry with the inode locked and then call\nd_delete() once the inode is unlocked.\n\nThe thing is that between detach_mounts() and d_delete() the dentry is\nstill hashed and positive. But after detach_mounts() nothing covers the\ndentry anymore. A lookup that finds this dentry in the dcache can\nuncover what the mounts hid.\n\nThat's a problem when unlinking files or directories that are\nmountpoints in other mount namespaces. Everybody who had the underlying\nentry covered can race the detach_mount() call until d_delete() has run.\n\nThe race window isn't all that small. It encompasses namespace_unlock()\nwith a full synchronize_rcu_expedited() grace period and the\ninode_unlock() of the entry.\n\nIn my experiments three walkers that kept trying read an overmounted\nfile in 11938 of the 16140 unlinks that removed its mountpoint from a\nbind mount of the filesystem within a minute.\n\nFun fact, d_invalidate() has the same ordering problem but gets it\nright. It unhashes the dentry first and detaches the mounts afterwards.\nLet's do the same in __detach_mounts():\n\n- A lookup that hasn't found the dentry yet misses it in the dcache and\n  waits for the directory lock that the caller holds until the name is\n  gone for good.\n\n- A lockless lookup that found it already fails the mount_lock check\n  while the dentry still counts as a mountpoint and the d_seq check once\n  it doesn't, and retries.\n\nThis fixes the lockless path. We still need to fix the reference count\nlookup in a follow-up patch.\n\nSo d_drop() the dentry. The dentry stays positive and held but can't be\nfound anymore. Then proceed with the detach and unlink.\n\nReproducer:\n\nThe reads were counted with the program below, three walkers for 60 s\nin a VM with 4 CPUs. The race window is stretched with the debug patch\npasted here. fs.detach_race_walk_us sleeps in lookup_fast() once it\nfound a mountpoint dentry and before its mounts are crossed.\nfs.detach_race_unlink_us sleeps in vfs_unlink() between detach_mounts()\nand d_delete().\n\n  // SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0\n  /*\n   * unlink_covered: unlink a file that is a mountpoint in a detached copy of\n   * its mount, against lookups that open it through that copy.\n   *\n   * A is a tmpfs with the file f1 (content SECRET_F) and the plain file\n   * MARK_A. A' is an open_tree(OPEN_TREE_CLONE) copy of A with MARK_A bound\n   * on A'/f1, held through an O_PATH fd on its root once the tree fd is\n   * closed. Walkers open f1 through that fd while the driver unlinks A/f1,\n   * where nothing is mounted on it. A walker may read MARK_A or get ENOENT.\n   * A read of SECRET_F is a hit: the name was found after its mount was\n   * gone. The lockless walks use openat2(RESOLVE_CACHED).\n   *\n   * usage: unlink_covered [-t seconds] [-w walkers]\n   */\n  #ifndef _GNU_SOURCE\n  #define _GNU_SOURCE\n  #endif\n  #include <errno.h>\n  #include <fcntl.h>\n  #include <pthread.h>\n  #include <stdatomic.h>\n  #include <stdio.h>\n  #include <stdlib.h>\n  #include <string.h>\n  #include <unistd.h>\n  #include <sys/mount.h>\n  #include <sys/stat.h>\n  #include <sys/syscall.h>\n  #include <linux/openat2.h>\n\n  #ifndef __NR_open_tree\n  #define __NR_open_tree 428\n  #endif\n  #ifndef __NR_move_mount\n  #define __NR_move_mount 429\n  #endif\n  #ifndef __NR_openat2\n  #define __NR_openat2 437\n  #endif\n  #ifndef OPEN_TREE_CLONE\n  #define OPEN_TREE_CLONE 1\n  #endif\n  #ifndef OPEN_TREE_CLOEXEC\n  #define OPEN_TREE_CLOEXEC O_CLOEXEC\n  #endif\n  #ifndef MOVE_MOUNT_F_EMPTY_PATH\n  #define MOVE_MOUNT_F_EMPTY_PATH 0x00000004\n  #endif\n\n  #define WORK \"/tmp/uc\"\n  #define ADIR WORK \"/A\"\n\n  static int duration = 60, nwalkers = 3;\n  static atomic_int stop, writer_waiting;\n  static pthread_rwlock_t cur_lock = PTHREAD_RWLOCK_INITIALIZER;\n  static int cur_fd = -1;\t\t/* the root of A', -1 wh\n---truncated---",
      "affected": [
        {
          "vendor": "Linux",
          "product": "Linux",
          "defaultStatus": "unaffected",
          "versions": [
            {
              "version": "8ed936b5671bfb33d89bc60bdcc7cf0470ba52fe",
              "status": "affected",
              "versionType": "git",
              "lessThan": "db90eecbde319527aa9480c039d32a0f5fe80574"
            },
            {
              "version": "8ed936b5671bfb33d89bc60bdcc7cf0470ba52fe",
              "status": "affected",
              "versionType": "git",
              "lessThan": "8d71bfc9b3fc15d7103e82ea9dc5057541866e46"
            },
            {
              "version": "8ed936b5671bfb33d89bc60bdcc7cf0470ba52fe",
              "status": "affected",
              "versionType": "git",
              "lessThan": "d29cd99db3db74cf3447be74d25740981789d461"
            },
            {
              "version": "8ed936b5671bfb33d89bc60bdcc7cf0470ba52fe",
              "status": "affected",
              "versionType": "git",
              "lessThan": "8300de4aa5d09061bfcf2af5b52c0cdba3873185"
            },
            {
              "version": "8ed936b5671bfb33d89bc60bdcc7cf0470ba52fe",
              "status": "affected",
              "versionType": "git",
              "lessThan": "528b383dc35d1e5caf64ddf5d35f983ae543b0d0"
            }
          ]
        },
        {
          "vendor": "Linux",
          "product": "Linux",
          "defaultStatus": "affected",
          "versions": [
            {
              "version": "3.18",
              "status": "affected"
            },
            {
              "version": "0",
              "status": "unaffected",
              "versionType": "semver",
              "lessThan": "3.18"
            },
            {
              "version": "6.6.160",
              "status": "unaffected",
              "versionType": "semver",
              "lessThanOrEqual": "6.6.*"
            },
            {
              "version": "6.12.114",
              "status": "unaffected",
              "versionType": "semver",
              "lessThanOrEqual": "6.12.*"
            },
            {
              "version": "6.18.57",
              "status": "unaffected",
              "versionType": "semver",
              "lessThanOrEqual": "6.18.*"
            },
            {
              "version": "7.2.11",
              "status": "unaffected",
              "versionType": "semver",
              "lessThanOrEqual": "7.2.*"
            },
            {
              "version": "7.3",
              "status": "unaffected",
              "versionType": "original_commit_for_fix",
              "lessThanOrEqual": "*"
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}