Critical · published September 16, 2026
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ceph: properly decrypt filenames in vmalloc() buffers
The fscrypt subsystem uses the scatterlist crypto API, inheriting its
requirement that any buffers are in the linear mapping region. However,
the messenger client uses kvmalloc() to create buffers for messages,
which will occasionally place those buffers in the vmalloc() region when
physical memory fragmentation doesn't permit a large enough kmalloc().
The various callers of ceph_fname_to_usr() directly pass (slices of) raw
messages from the MDS without considering that the messages may be in
vmalloc() buffers, resulting in oopses especially on non-x86 platforms
(see 'Closes:' for more details and a reproducer).
Make ceph_fname_to_usr() explicitly tolerant of vmalloc()-allocated
fname->ctext, fname->name, and/or oname->name buffers, using `tname`
(which, when non-null, must be a linear address; when null, is briefly
allocated as necessary) as a bounce buffer to avoid passing any
inappropriate addresses to fscrypt_fname_disk_to_usr().
Additionally change parse_reply_info_readdir() -- the only function to
supply its own `tname` -- to follow the new "tname must never come from
vmalloc()" rule by passing NULL when the message is not in the linear
region. Though this causes a per-dentry kmalloc()+kfree(), this overhead
exists only when processing the minority of messages that spill into
vmalloc(). My (crude) testing puts this at only about 1 in 8,000 readdir
messages. Still, if the overhead proves unreasonable in the future, it
is easy enough to mitigate: a future change could allocate a bounce
buffer in parse_reply_info_readdir() and use that as `tname` instead.