CVEvulnerability
CVE-2026-43472
5.5 MEDIUM
Official page ↗
- Status
- Analyzed
- Published
- 2026-05-08
- Last modified
- 2026-06-17
- Assigner
- 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67
- CVSS 3.1 ([email protected])
- 5.5 MEDIUM — CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Weaknesses
- CWE-908
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
unshare: fix unshare_fs() handling
There's an unpleasant corner case in unshare(2), when we have a
CLONE_NEWNS in flags and current->fs hadn't been shared at all; in that
case copy_mnt_ns() gets passed current->fs instead of a private copy,
which causes interesting warts in proof of correctness]
> I guess if private means fs->users == 1, the condition could still be true.
Unfortunately, it's worse than just a convoluted proof of correctness.
Consider the case when we have CLONE_NEWCGROUP in addition to CLONE_NEWNS
(and current->fs->users == 1).
We pass current->fs to copy_mnt_ns(), all right. Suppose it succeeds and
flips current->fs->{pwd,root} to corresponding locations in the new namespace.
Now we proceed to copy_cgroup_ns(), which fails (e.g. with -ENOMEM).
We call put_mnt_ns() on the namespace created by copy_mnt_ns(), it's
destroyed and its mount tree is dissolved, but... current->fs->root and
current->fs->pwd are both left pointing to now detached mounts.
They are pinning those, so it's not a UAF, but it leaves the calling
process with unshare(2) failing with -ENOMEM _and_ leaving it with
pwd and root on detached isolated mounts. The last part is clearly a bug.
There is other fun related to that mess (races with pivot_root(), including
the one between pivot_root() and fork(), of all things), but this one
is easy to isolate and fix - treat CLONE_NEWNS as "allocate a new
fs_struct even if it hadn't been shared in the first place". Sure, we could
go for something like "if both CLONE_NEWNS *and* one of the things that might
end up failing after copy_mnt_ns() call in create_new_namespaces() are set,
force allocation of new fs_struct", but let's keep it simple - the cost
of copy_fs_struct() is trivial.
Another benefit is that copy_mnt_ns() with CLONE_NEWNS *always* gets
a freshly allocated fs_struct, yet to be attached to anything. That
seriously simplifies the analysis...
FWIW, that bug had been there since the introduction of unshare(2) ;-/
Affected configurations
• linux linux kernel (>= 2.6.16.1 < 5.10.253)
• linux linux kernel (>= 5.11 < 5.15.203)
• linux linux kernel (>= 5.16 < 6.1.167)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.2 < 6.6.130)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.7 < 6.12.78)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.13 < 6.18.19)
• linux linux kernel (>= 6.19 < 6.19.9)
• linux linux kernel 2.6.16
• linux linux kernel 7.0
Related
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-908 Use of Uninitialized Resource weakness
References
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/42e21e74061b0ebbd859839f81acf10efad02a27 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6c4b2243cb6c0755159bd567130d5e12e7b10d9f Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/845bf3c6963a52096d0d3866e4a92db77a0c03d8 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/aa9ebc084505fb26dd90f4d7a249045aad152043 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/af8f4be3b68ac8caa41c8e5ead0eeaf5e85e42d0 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d0d99f60538ddb4a62ccaac2168d8f448965f083 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d3ffc8f13034af895531a02c30b1fe3a34b46432 Patch
- https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d7963d6997fea86a6def242ac36198b86655f912 Patch