Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
netfs: fix reference leak
Commit 20d72b00ca81 ("netfs: Fix the request's work item to not
require a ref") modified netfs_alloc_request() to initialize the
reference counter to 2 instead of 1. The rationale was that the
requet's "work" would release the second reference after completion
(via netfs_{read,write}_collection_worker()). That works most of the
time if all goes well.
However, it leaks this additional reference if the request is released
before the I/O operation has been submitted: the error code path only
decrements the reference counter once and the work item will never be
queued because there will never be a completion.
This has caused outages of our whole server cluster today because
tasks were blocked in netfs_wait_for_outstanding_io(), leading to
deadlocks in Ceph (another bug that I will address soon in another
patch). This was caused by a netfs_pgpriv2_begin_copy_to_cache() call
which failed in fscache_begin_write_operation(). The leaked
netfs_io_request was never completed, leaving `netfs_inode.io_count`
with a positive value forever.
All of this is super-fragile code. Finding out which code paths will
lead to an eventual completion and which do not is hard to see:
- Some functions like netfs_create_write_req() allocate a request, but
will never submit any I/O.
- netfs_unbuffered_read_iter_locked() calls netfs_unbuffered_read()
and then netfs_put_request(); however, netfs_unbuffered_read() can
also fail early before submitting the I/O request, therefore another
netfs_put_request() call must be added there.
A rule of thumb is that functions that return a `netfs_io_request` do
not submit I/O, and all of their callers must be checked.
For my taste, the whole netfs code needs an overhaul to make reference
counting easier to understand and less fragile & obscure. But to fix
this bug here and now and produce a patch that is adequate for a
stable backport, I tried a minimal approach that quickly frees the
request object upon early failure.
I decided against adding a second netfs_put_request() each time
because that would cause code duplication which obscures the code
further. Instead, I added the function netfs_put_failed_request()
which frees such a failed request synchronously under the assumption
that the reference count is exactly 2 (as initially set by
netfs_alloc_request() and never touched), verified by a
WARN_ON_ONCE(). It then deinitializes the request object (without
going through the "cleanup_work" indirection) and frees the allocation
(with RCU protection to protect against concurrent access by
netfs_requests_seq_start()).
All code paths that fail early have been changed to call
netfs_put_failed_request() instead of netfs_put_request().
Additionally, I have added a netfs_put_request() call to
netfs_unbuffered_read() as explained above because the
netfs_put_failed_request() approach does not work there.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linux | Linux | 6.15.3 – < 6.16, 6.16 | 6.16 |
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Debian
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian 14 | linux | 6.16.10-1 | — |
Ubuntu
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu 25.10 | linux | 6.17.0-6.6 | — |
| Ubuntu 25.10 | linux-aws +2 | 6.17.0-1003.3 | — |
| Ubuntu 25.10 | linux-azure | 6.17.0-1006.6 | — |
| Ubuntu 25.10 | linux-azure-fde | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 25.10 | linux-raspi | 6.17.0-1004.4 | — |
| Ubuntu 25.10 | linux-realtime | 6.17.0-1002.3 | — |
| Ubuntu 25.10 | linux-riscv | 6.17.0-6.6.1 | — |
| Ubuntu 24.04 LTS | linux-riscv +17 | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 22.04 LTS | linux-riscv +32 | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 20.04 LTS | linux-gke +28 | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 18.04 LTS | linux-gcp +14 | No fix yet | — |
Show 2 more (older releases, extended support, other products)Fewer releases
| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu 16.04 LTS | linux-hwe-edge | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu Pro Realtime 24.04 LTS | linux-realtime-6.14 | No fix yet | — |
Advisories 1
- WID-SEC-2025-2350 Linux Kernel: Mehrere Schwachstellen BSI CERT-Bund (WID) · Sep 21, 2026