CVE-2026-45915

fat: avoid parent link count underflow in rmdir

published May 27, 2026

CVSS
—
EPSS
0%
Percentile
5.1
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

fat: avoid parent link count underflow in rmdir

Corrupted FAT images can leave a directory inode with an incorrect

i_nlink (e.g. 2 even though subdirectories exist). rmdir then

unconditionally calls drop_nlink(dir) and can drive i_nlink to 0,

triggering the WARN_ON in drop_nlink().

Add a sanity check in vfat_rmdir() and msdos_rmdir(): only drop the

parent link count when it is at least 3, otherwise report a filesystem

error.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS
Not scored
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00162 · 5.1th percentile
Published
2026-05-27T12:17Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 27 MAY 12:17Z
    fat: avoid parent link count underflow in rmdir
    cvelistv5