Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2026-72161

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ocfs2: add journal NULL check in ocfs2_checkpoint_inode() During unmount, ocfs2_journal_shutdown() frees the journal and sets osb->journal to NULL. Later, when VFS evicts remaining cached inodes, ocfs2_evict_inode() -> ocfs2_clear_inode() -> ocfs2_checkpoint_inode() -> ocfs2_ci_fully_checkpointed() dereferences osb->journal, causing a NULL pointer dereference. Fix this by adding a NULL check for osb->journal in ocfs2_checkpoint_inode(). If the journal is NULL, it has already been fully flushed and destroyed during shutdown, so there is nothing to checkpoint.

Published · last modified .

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.002 (10.6th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 11th percentile — 10.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-72161: held from 0.002 to 0.002.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.002 · change: +0.000

Affected products

  • Linux — versions 7.2-rc1, 6.6.145, da5e7c87827e8caa6a1eeec6d95dcf74ab592a01

References