netfs: fix reference leak
Key facts
- Attack vector
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- Privileges required
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- User interaction
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- Attack complexity
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- Impact type
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- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
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- Fix status
- Partial Red Hat: 1 without a fix
No CVSS vector from any source. Fix status from CNA and Red Hat.
Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: netfs: fix reference leak Commit 20d72b00ca81 ("netfs: Fix the request's work item to not require a ref") modified netfs_alloc_request() to initialize the reference counter to 2 instead of 1. The rationale was that the requet's "work" would release the second reference after completion (via netfs_{read,write}_collection_worker()). That works most of the time if all goes well. However, it leaks this additional reference if the request is released before the I/O operation has been submitted: the error code path only decrements the reference counter once and the work item will never be queued because there will never be a completion. This has caused outages of our whole server cluster today because tasks were blocked in netfs_wait_for_outstanding_io(), leading to deadlocks in Ceph (another bug that I will address soon in another patch). This was caused by a netfs_pgpriv2_begin_copy_to_cache() call which failed in fscache_begin_write_operation(). The leaked netfs_io_request was never completed, leaving `netfs_inode.io_count` with a positive value forever. All of this is super-fragile code. Finding out which code paths will lead to an eventual completion and which do not is hard to see: - Some functions like netfs_create_write_req() allocate a request, but will never submit any I/O. - netfs_unbuffered_read_iter_locked() calls netfs_unbuffered_read() and then netfs_put_request(); however, netfs_unbuffered_read() can also fail early before submitting the I/O request, therefore another netfs_put_request() call must be added there. A rule of thumb is that functions that return a `netfs_io_request` do not submit I/O, and all of their callers must be checked. For my taste, the whole netfs code needs an overhaul to make reference counting easier to understand and less fragile & obscure. But to fix this bug here and now and produce a patch that is adequate for a stable backport, I tried a minimal approach that quickly frees the request object upon early failure. I decided against adding a second netfs_put_request() each time because that would cause code duplication which obscures the code further. Instead, I added the function netfs_put_failed_request() which frees such a failed request synchronously under the assumption that the reference count is exactly 2 (as initially set by netfs_alloc_request() and never touched), verified by a WARN_ON_ONCE(). It then deinitializes the request object (without going through the "cleanup_work" indirection) and frees the allocation (with RCU protection to protect against concurrent access by netfs_requests_seq_start()). All code paths that fail early have been changed to call netfs_put_failed_request() instead of netfs_put_request(). Additionally, I have added a netfs_put_request() call to netfs_unbuffered_read() as explained above because the netfs_put_failed_request() approach does not work there.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.
Affected products
Remediation
- Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 6.16
- Fix · CNA Linux (Linux) Fixed in 6.16.10, 6.17
Vendor assessments
Red Hat
Red Hat rating: Moderate. Red Hat's page for this CVE →
| Product | Status | Plan or fix |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | Affected | No fix yet: Fix deferred |
Not affected: 4 products
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2025-40007
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-gvqp-7rxr-73ch
References
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Sources
- CVE-2025-40007 · CVE Program
- CVE-2025-40007 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-gvqp-7rxr-73ch · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2025-40007 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
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