CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-98941

HighCVSS 7.0
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.19%

8th percentile - higher than 8% of all known CVEs

Summary

In the Linux kernel, ext4 fails to disable large folios on encrypted inodes when the encrypt feature is enabled on a mounted filesystem, bypassing the mount-time check. Writing encrypted data then triggers a kernel NULL pointer dereference crash. This affects kernels between v6.19 and v7.2.

Risk Assessment

Can cause kernel crashes and system unavailability when writing encrypted data, posing a risk to data confidentiality, integrity, and service continuity.

Recommendation

Update the kernel to a version containing the fix (v7.3 or later) or avoid enabling the encrypt feature on a mounted ext4 filesystem.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ext4: don't enable large folios on encrypted inodes Commit 709f0f1f1bf5 ("ext4: add checks for large folio incompatibilities when BS > PS") disables large folios at mount time if the "encrypt" feature is set. However, enabling that feature on a mounted filesystem circumvents that check, and writing encrypted data results in a crash: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000028 Workqueue: ext4-rsv-conversion ext4_end_io_rsv_work RIP: 0010:ext4_finish_bio+0xf7/0x3e0 Call Trace: ext4_release_io_end+0x51/0x110 ext4_end_io_end+0x4c/0xe0 ext4_end_io_rsv_work+0xb3/0x100 Fix this by disabling large folios on encrypted inodes, as is already done for inodes that use data journaling. This affects all kernels between v6.19 and v7.2, but it is not needed in v7.3, where the code was significantly refactored.

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