Vulnerability in Linux

CVE-2026-98831

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: of/overlay: don't leak fragment references when changeset init fails init_overlay_changeset() stores the number of initialized fragments in ovcs->count only on full success. When find_target() or the __symbols__ lookup fails partway through, the target and overlay references taken for the fragments initialized so far are never dropped: free_overlay_changeset() bounds its cleanup loop by ovcs->count, which is still 0. Store the running count on the error path so free_overlay_changeset() puts whatever was set up. The store is guarded by ovcs->fragments because on the allocation-failure path cnt still holds the counting pass total while there is no fragments array; everywhere else cnt only counts fully-initialized fragments.

Published 2026-10-18.