Vulnerability in Linux
CVE-2026-72189
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ntfs: fail attrlist updates when the superblock is inactive generic_shutdown_super() clears SB_ACTIVE before evicting cached inodes. If eviction selects the fake inode for a base inode's unnamed $ATTRIBUTE_LIST attribute, ntfs_evict_big_inode() drops the fake inode's reference on the base inode while the fake inode is still hashed and marked I_FREEING. That iput can synchronously write back the base inode. The writeback path may update mapping pairs and call ntfs_attrlist_update(), which unconditionally calls ntfs_attr_iget() for the same $ATTRIBUTE_LIST fake inode. VFS then finds the I_FREEING inode and waits for eviction to finish, but the current task is still inside that eviction path, causing a self-deadlock in find_inode(). Fix this by mirroring the teardown guard used by __ntfs_write_inode(): once SB_ACTIVE has been cleared, do not try to iget the attribute-list fake inode. Return -EIO so teardown aborts the update instead of waiting on the inode it is evicting.
Published · last modified .
EPSS exploit prediction
EPSS: 0.002 (8.6th percentile), scored .
Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 9th percentile — 8.6% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.
EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.002 · newest: 0.002 · change: +0.000
Affected products
- Linux — versions 495e90fa334828d4119061e2726af51d0a0fb4ed, 7.2, 7.2-rc3