Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2026-72318

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: cifs: validate DFS referral string offsets parse_dfs_referrals() validates that the response header and referral array fit in the received buffer, but each referral also contains string offsets supplied by the server. Those offsets are used to compute the DfsPath and NetworkAddress string pointers without checking whether they still point inside the response buffer. A malformed referral can therefore make the computed pointer exceed the end of the buffer. The resulting negative max_len is then passed to cifs_strndup_from_utf16(), and the non-Unicode path forwards it to kstrndup() as a size_t, allowing strnlen() to read out of bounds. Validate each string offset before deriving the string pointer.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.4 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:L/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.006 (46.3th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 46th percentile — 46.3% 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-2026-72318: held from 0.006 to 0.006.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.006 · newest: 0.006 · change: +0.000

Affected products

  • Linux — versions 6.6.145, 7.2, 6.18.40

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-72318?
CVE-2026-72318 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 9.4/10. Published 2026-08-15.
How severe is CVE-2026-72318?
Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.4 out of 10.