CVE-2026-53244

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: VFS: fix possible failure to unlock in nfsd4_create_file() atomic_create() in fs/namei.c drops the reference to the dentry when it returns an error. This behaviour was imported into dentry_create() so that it will drop the reference if an error is returned from atomic_create(), though not if vfs_create() returns an error (in the case where ->atomic_create is not supported). The caller - nfsd4_create_file() - is made aware of this by checking path->dentry, which will either be a counted reference to a dentry, or an error pointer. However the change to use start_creating()/end_creating() (which landed shortly before the dentry_create() change landed, though was likely developed around the same time) means that nfsd4_create_file() *needs* a valid dentry so that it can unlock the parent. The net result is that if NFSD exports a filesystem which uses ->atomic_create, and if a call to ->atomic_create returns an error, then nfsd4_create_file() will pass an error pointer to end_creating() and the parent will not be unlocked. Fix this by changing dentry_create() to make sure path->dentry is always a valid dentry, never an error-pointer. The actual error is already returned a different way. Note that if ->atomic_create() returns a different dentry (which may not be possible in practice) we are guaranteed (because it is only ever provided by d_spliace_alias()) that it will have the same d_parent and so it will have the same effect when passed to end_creating().

CVSS 3.1

7.5 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS

0.49% probability · 41th percentile

CISA KEV

Not listed

Affected

linux/linux kernel

Source

416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.