Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2025-71072

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: shmem: fix recovery on rename failures maple_tree insertions can fail if we are seriously short on memory; simple_offset_rename() does not recover well if it runs into that. The same goes for simple_offset_rename_exchange(). Moreover, shmem_whiteout() expects that if it succeeds, the caller will progress to d_move(), i.e. that shmem_rename2() won't fail past the successful call of shmem_whiteout(). Not hard to fix, fortunately - mtree_store() can't fail if the index we are trying to store into is already present in the tree as a singleton. For simple_offset_rename_exchange() that's enough - we just need to be careful about the order of operations. For simple_offset_rename() solution is to preinsert the target into the tree for new_dir; the rest can be done without any potentially failing operations. That preinsertion has to be done in shmem_rename2() rather than in simple_offset_rename() itself - otherwise we'd need to deal with the possibility of failure after successful shmem_whiteout().

EPSS: 0.001 (2.2th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 8.2 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H.

Affected products

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-71072?
CVE-2025-71072 is a high-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 8.2/10. Published 2026-01-13.
How severe is CVE-2025-71072?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 8.2 out of 10.