audit: avoid dropping live tree ref on fsnotify rule autoremove (Linux Linux)

CVE-2026-89643
CRITICAL 9.8

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.71 % · percentile 54 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
Linux
NVD status
Received

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: audit: avoid dropping live tree ref on fsnotify rule autoremove audit_del_rule() is used for both netlink deletion templates and internal fsnotify autoremove. The former passes a parsed template which owns a temporary tree reference; the latter passes the installed entry itself. The unconditional audit_put_tree() at the end of audit_del_rule() assumes the template case. For mixed AUDIT_DIR plus AUDIT_EXE rules, an fsnotify autoremove event therefore drops the installed rule's live tree reference. Repeating this across rules sharing the same tree can free the tree while another rule still references it, and a later autoremove dereferences the freed pathname while comparing rules. Move the temporary-tree put to audit_rule_change(), the caller that owns deletion templates. Keep it in the AUDIT_DEL_RULE cleanup so both successful deletion and -ENOENT still release the parser-owned tree. [PM: dropped unnecessary comment for line length reasons]

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HLinux
CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 9.8CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HNVD · 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67 (Secondary)

European references

CERT-FR advisories

Affected products

ProductVersions
Linux · Linuxaffected 34d99af52ad40bd498ba66970579a5bc1fb1a3bc < 9cac21f8eb82675ed19fb955b8bbb9dd14cc3d58 ; affected 34d99af52ad40bd498ba66970579a5bc1fb1a3bc < b322cc7adcd2e6ec1594d187533a126506ab545c ; affected 34d99af52ad40bd498ba66970579a5bc1fb1a3bc < 695c85dc345a4e0292739f004c261bedef3f27e6 ; affected 34d99af52ad40bd498ba66970579a5bc1fb1a3bc < 01b0ec8c397be65ff710777c97017ca1de56ef8e ; affected 34d99af52ad40bd498ba66970579a5bc1fb1a3bc < cf37b61b5420fd4600fe78cf8c24da6e4d9bfe28 ; affected 34d99af52ad40bd498ba66970579a5bc1fb1a3bc < 636a99bab36ba27515363d325866c0273ac83b3e
Linux · Linuxaffected 4.3 ; unaffected 0 < 4.3 ; unaffected 5.10.270 ≤ 5.10.* ; unaffected 5.15.221 ≤ 5.15.* ; unaffected 6.1.188 ≤ 6.1.* ; unaffected 6.6.157 ≤ 6.6.*

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST — attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA — reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
CERT-FR (ANSSI)Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain — this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD