CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-72316

Low risk· EPSS 13%
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.22%

13th percentile - higher than 13% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the dm era module has a bug where metadata_open() returning NULL is not handled properly. The era_ctr() function only checks IS_ERR(md), and since IS_ERR(NULL) returns false, NULL is treated as a valid result, leading to a NULL pointer dereference when accessing metadata.

Risk Assessment

A NULL pointer dereference can cause a system panic, leading to service unavailability and potential data loss.

Recommendation

Install the Linux kernel patch that changes metadata_open() to return ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM) on allocation failure. Reboot the system after the update to apply changes.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

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Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: dm era: fix NULL pointer dereference in metadata_open() metadata_open() returns NULL when kzalloc_obj() fails, but the caller era_ctr() only checks IS_ERR(md). Since IS_ERR(NULL) returns false, the NULL pointer is treated as a valid result and later assigned to era->md, leading to a NULL pointer dereference when the metadata is accessed. Fix this by returning ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM) on allocation failure, consistent with dm-cache-metadata.c, dm-thin-metadata.c, and dm-clone-metadata.c which all use ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM) for the same pattern.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS