Read the docs
TI-2025-26679 Aliases CVE-2025-40007GHSA-gvqp-7rxr-73ch

netfs: fix reference leak

Priority LOW 22Published · Updated

Key facts

Attack vector
—
Privileges required
—
User interaction
—
Attack complexity
—
Impact type
—
Confidentiality · integrity · availability
—
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

EPSS 0.00225 13th percentileScored 2026-11-07
Fix Partial Linux (Linux): 6.16, 6.16.10, 6.17Red Hat: 1 without a fix

SSVC decision points

Not available: CISA has not published SSVC decision points for this record.

Affected products

VendorProductAffected versionsFixed inStatusSource
LinuxLinux6.15.3 to before 6.166.16Patch availableCNA
LinuxLinux6.16 and later6.16.10, 6.17Patch availableCNA
  • Linux VendorLinux Affected 6.15.3 to before 6.16 Fixed in 6.16 Patch available CNA
  • Linux VendorLinux Affected 6.16 and later Fixed in 6.16.10, 6.17 Patch available CNA

CPE names Threatist (inferred) · 1

Inferred from how NVD named this product before; not given by a source.

CPEVersionsRoleVendor
cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*——Linux
  • cpe:2.3:o:linux:linux_kernel:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:* Versions — — ·Linux

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 →

ProductStatusPlan or fix
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10AffectedNo 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

  1. 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2025-40007
  2. 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-gvqp-7rxr-73ch

References

  • TI-2025-26358 tls: fix handling of zero-length records on the rx_list KEVCVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8
  • TI-2026-38352 netfilter: bridge: make ebt_snat ARP rewrite writable KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8
  • TI-2021-02452 Incorrect authorization in Ubuntu linux kernel KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8
  • TI-2013-05264 The (1) get_user and (2) put_user API functions in the Linux kernel before 3.5.5 on the… KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.8
  • TI-2022-00125 Integer overflow in kernel KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.4
  • TI-2013-01864 The perf_swevent_init function in kernel/events/core.c in the Linux kernel before 3.8.9… KEVCVSS 3.1HIGH 8.4
See all 21741 →

Sources