CVE-2026-99173: eventfs: Free the eventfs_inode after an rcu grace period too

Published Oct 28, 2026
·
Updated

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

eventfs: Free the eventfsinode after an rcu grace period too

tracefsdrevalidate() reads ->isfreed of the eventfsinode that dentry->dfsdata points to, and ->drevalidate() is called in rcu pathwalk mode with nothing but rcureadlock() held. The dentry itself stays around for such a walker, but tracefsdrelease() drops its reference to the eventfsinode when the dentry is killed, and releaseei() then frees it after a grace period of eventfssrcu. An SRCU grace period doesn't wait for rcureadlock() sections, so the walker can read an eventfsinode that is already gone.

With a pathwalk held up in tracefsdrevalidate() while the dentry goes away:

BUG: KASAN: slab-use-after-free in tracefsdrevalidate+0x76/0x90 Read of size 1 at addr ff1100010152d8d0 by task walker/97 Call Trace: <TASK> tracefsdrevalidate+0x76/0x90 lookupfast+0x320/0x640 pathlookupat+0x160/0xb00 filenamelookup+0x1f1/0x5b0 vfsstatx+0xd7/0x3b0 vfsfstatat+0x4d/0x90 dosysnewfstatat+0xa0/0x100 dosyscall64+0x10e/0x5e0 entrySYSCALL64afterhwframe+0x77/0x7f [...] Allocated by task 1: kmalloccachenoprof+0x249/0x560 eventfscreatedir+0x7a/0x590 eventcreatedir+0x2fb/0xcf0 traceaddeventcall+0xbf/0x150 [...] Freed by task 11: kfree+0x1db/0x5b0 srcuinvokecallbacks+0x3a3/0x620 processonework+0x937/0x1810 workerthread+0x4f1/0xd60

Before commit 8e556432477e ("eventfs: Use SRCU for freeing eventfsinodes") releaseei() used callrcu(), which covered the walker, while eventfsiterate() needs the SRCU grace period. Wait for both and chain callrcu() from the SRCU callback.

Affected Software

1 affected component
Linux Linux kernel

Event History

Oct 28, 2026
CVE Published
via MITRE·10:35 AM
Data Sourced
via MITRE·10:35 AM
Description

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