Critical · published September 12, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
lockd: pin next file across nlm_inspect_file lock-drop
nlm_traverse_files() pins the current file with f_count++ across
a mutex_unlock for nlm_inspect_file(), but nothing pins the saved
next pointer. A concurrent nlm_release_file() can kfree the next
file during the unlock window, and the iterator dereferences freed
memory on the next loop step.
Pin both current and next before the lock-drop. Advance by
swapping the pinned cursors at the end of each iteration so next
is always held alive across the unlock.
Always call nlm_file_release() after dropping the iteration pin,
regardless of whether the file matched the predicate. Use
nlm_file_inuse(), which does a live walk of the inode lock list,
rather than the cached f_locks field, so skipped files that never
ran nlm_inspect_file() are evaluated correctly.
Because every file in a hash bucket is now pinned and released,
files skipped by the is_failover_file predicate that have no
locks, blocks, shares, or external references are deleted during
traversal. The old code never evaluated skipped files for
cleanup. The new behavior is intentional: such files are stale
and should not persist in the table.