Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2026-72472

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: nfs: use nfsi->rwsem to protect traversal of the file lock list Lingfeng identified a bug and suggested two solutions, but both appear to have issues. Generally, we cannot release flc_lock while iterating over the file lock list to avoid use-after-free (UAF) problems with file locks. However, functions like nfs_delegation_claim_locks and nfs4_reclaim_locks cannot adhere to this rule because recover_lock or nfs4_lock_delegation_recall may take a long time. To resolve this, NFS switches to using nfsi->rwsem for the same protection, and nfs_reclaim_locks follows this approach. Although nfs_delegation_claim_locks uses so_delegreturn_mutex instead, this is inadequate since a single inode can have multiple nfs4_state instances. Therefore, the fix is to also use nfsi->rwsem in this case. Furthermore, after commit c69899a17ca4 ("NFSv4: Update of VFS byte range lock must be atomic with the stateid update"), the functions nfs4_locku_done and nfs4_lock_done also break this rule because they call locks_lock_inode_wait without holding nfsi->rwsem. Simply adding this protection could cause many deadlocks, so instead, the call to locks_lock_inode_wait is moved into _nfs4_proc_setlk. Regarding the bug fixed by commit c69899a17ca4 ("NFSv4: Update of VFS byte range lock must be atomic with the stateid update"), it has been resolved after commit 0460253913e5 ("NFSv4: nfs4_do_open() is incorrectly triggering state recovery") because all slots are drained before calling nfs4_do_reclaim, which prevents concurrent stateid changes along this path. Also, nfs_delegation_claim_locks does not cause this concurrency either since when _nfs4_proc_setlk is called with NFS_DELEGATED_STATE, no RPC is sent, so nfs4_lock_done is not called. Therefore, nfs4_lock_delegation_recall from nfs_delegation_claim_locks is the first time the stateid is set.

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.8 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.007 (49.2th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 49th percentile — 49.2% 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-2026-72472: held from 0.006 to 0.007.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.006 · newest: 0.007 · change: +0.000

Affected products

  • Linux — versions 4.0, 7.2-rc1, c69899a17ca4836230720e65493942d9582a0424

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-72472?
CVE-2026-72472 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Linux. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2026-08-15.
How severe is CVE-2026-72472?
Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.