CVE-2026-72193
Low risk· EPSS 11%Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk11th percentile - higher than 11% of all known CVEs
Summary
A vulnerability in the Linux kernel's ntfs3 driver allows an infinite loop during mount of a crafted NTFS disk image, hanging the mounting thread and triggering a soft-lockup panic. The issue is caused by an unbounded iteration in check_rstbl() while traversing the free-entry list of RESTART_TABLE. A crafted image with a cyclic free chain bypasses existing guards and causes a denial of service.
Risk Assessment
The risk is a denial of service (DoS) via a malicious USB drive or disk image that, when auto-mounted, hangs the system or triggers a kernel panic. The vulnerability is reachable from desktop auto-mount on many popular distributions.
Recommendation
Update the Linux kernel to a version containing the fix that bounds the free-chain walker by rt->used. Until then, consider disabling auto-mount of NTFS media or blacklisting the ntfs3 driver.
Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel
See all- CVE-2026-99259Unknown
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- CVE-2026-99258Unknown
In the Linux kernel, hv_apicid_to_vp_index() uses per-CPU hypercall input and output pages. In an SEV-SNP CoCo VM without a paravisor the output page is not allocated, so the hypervisor stores the resulting VP index into memory not allocated by the guest. The fix uses the input page for both input and output.
- CVE-2026-99257Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the shared GPIO mechanism based on platform lookup tables requires an associated struct device. An fwnode-based lookup with no associated device currently causes a NULL-pointer dereference. The fix adds a check that lets the kernel gracefully handle this situation with an error.
- CVE-2026-99256Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the dm cache module used a rw_semaphore for background_work_lock, although write locks on rw_semaphores have strict owner semantics. The locking process was not always the same as the unlocking one, triggering a warning with CONFIG_DEBUG_RWSEMS during suspend/resume of a cache device. The fix replaces the rw_semaphore with a spinlock and a wait queue.
- CVE-2026-99251Unknown
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- CVE-2026-99250Unknown
In the Linux kernel, the NBCON console printing kthreads are started very early during boot via early_initcall(). Asynchronously enabling/disabling interrupts during early boot may interfere with early SMP setup on some hardware platforms, causing hangs. The fix postpones kthread startup until after all arch initcalls have completed.
- CVE-2026-99249Unknown
In the Linux kernel, zap_pid_ns_processes() waiting for PID namespace cleanup was not freezable. A tracer outside the namespace that does not reap its traced zombies keeps PIDs allocated, making the wait unbounded and causing every suspend attempt to fail. The fix makes the wait loops use TASK_FREEZABLE states so the freezer can freeze waiting tasks.
- CVE-2026-99248Unknown
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- CVE-2026-99247Unknown
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- CVE-2026-99215Unknown
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Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ntfs3: cap RESTART_TABLE free-chain walker at rt->used A crafted NTFS3 disk image triggers an in-kernel infinite loop at mount time, hanging the mounting thread and firing the soft-lockup watchdog within ~22s on multi-CPU hosts (panic with kernel.softlockup_panic=1). The bug is reachable from desktop USB auto-mount on distributions where udisks2 routes the NTFS signature to the in-tree ntfs3 driver (Arch family and an increasing fraction of Fedora / openSUSE / RHEL deployments); CAP_SYS_ADMIN-class manual mount elsewhere. check_rstbl()'s second walker iterates the free-entry singly-linked list headed by rt->first_free with no upper bound on iteration count: for (off = ff; off;) { if (off == RESTART_ENTRY_ALLOCATED) return false; off = le32_to_cpu(*(__le32 *)Add2Ptr(rt, off)); if (off > ts - sizeof(__le32)) return false; } The existing guards cover three exits: end-of-list (off == 0), the in-use marker (off == RESTART_ENTRY_ALLOCATED), and out-of-bounds (off > ts - sizeof(__le32)). None of the three prevents an in-bounds cycle. A crafted on-disk RESTART_TABLE whose free chain contains a self-loop or A->B->A cycle whose offsets satisfy: - in range [sizeof(struct RESTART_TABLE), ts - sizeof(__le32)] - (off - sizeof(struct RESTART_TABLE)) % rsize == 0 passes all existing guards and spins the mount-time thread forever. Reproduced in UML by hand-forging a 2 MB NTFS3 image whose journal RESTART_TABLE first_free = 0x18 and whose entry at offset 0x18 stores 0x18 as its next pointer; mount of the forged image with the in-tree ntfs3 driver never returns. Bound the walker by rt->used. Each entry on a legitimate free chain is unique, and the total slot count is ne = le16_to_cpu (rt->used). A traversal that visits more than ne slots is by construction malformed; reject it as a corrupt RESTART_TABLE. After this patch, mount of the forged image returns with -EINVAL and a log_replay failure message, and mkntfs-produced legitimate images mount cleanly (verified in the same UML harness).
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

