published August 15, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
fs: refuse O_TMPFILE creation with an unmapped fsuid or fsgid
vfs_tmpfile() never checked that the caller's fsuid and fsgid map into
the filesystem. On an idmapped mount whose idmapping does not cover the
caller's fs{u,g}id, the ->tmpfile() instance initializes the new inode
through inode_init_owner(), where mapped_fsuid()/mapped_fsgid() return
INVALID_UID/INVALID_GID, and the tmpfile ends up owned by (uid_t)-1.
Every other creation path already refuses this: may_o_create() (O_CREAT)
and may_create_dentry() (mkdir, mknod, symlink, link) bail out with
-EOVERFLOW via fsuidgid_has_mapping() precisely so that an object cannot
be created with an owner the filesystem cannot represent. An O_TMPFILE
is no exception: it is created I_LINKABLE and linkat(2) can splice it
into the namespace afterwards, so the same guarantee must hold.
Add the missing fsuidgid_has_mapping() check to vfs_tmpfile(). On a
non-idmapped mount the caller's fs{u,g}id always map in the superblock's
user namespace, so this is a no-op there and only takes effect on an
idmapped mount that does not map the caller. It applies to every
filesystem that sets FS_ALLOW_IDMAP and implements ->tmpfile() (tmpfs,
ext4, btrfs, xfs, f2fs, ...), and to overlayfs, whose upper-layer
tmpfile creation funnels through vfs_tmpfile() via backing_tmpfile_open().