CVE-2026-45924
MediumCVSS 5.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk11th percentile - higher than 11% of all known CVEs
Summary
A vulnerability has been identified in the Linux kernel within the ksmbd module, requiring the call to ksmbd_vfs_kern_path_end_removing() in two places to balance removal operations. Failure to do so may lead to potential deadlocks and unbalanced locks.
Risk Assessment
Organizations may experience performance and stability issues, including the risk of deadlocks, which could lead to service outages.
Recommendation
It is recommended to update the Linux kernel to the latest version to mitigate this vulnerability and to monitor the system for lock-related errors.
Original NVD description (English source)
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ksmbd: call ksmbd_vfs_kern_path_end_removing() on some error paths There are two places where ksmbd_vfs_kern_path_end_removing() needs to be called in order to balance what the corresponding successful call to ksmbd_vfs_kern_path_start_removing() has done, i.e. drop inode locks and put the taken references. Otherwise there might be potential deadlocks and unbalanced locks which are caught like: BUG: workqueue leaked lock or atomic: kworker/5:21/0x00000000/7596 last function: handle_ksmbd_work 2 locks held by kworker/5:21/7596: #0: ffff8881051ae448 (sb_writers#3){.+.+}-{0:0}, at: ksmbd_vfs_kern_path_locked+0x142/0x660 #1: ffff888130e966c0 (&type->i_mutex_dir_key#3/1){+.+.}-{4:4}, at: ksmbd_vfs_kern_path_locked+0x17d/0x660 CPU: 5 PID: 7596 Comm: kworker/5:21 Not tainted 6.1.162-00456-gc29b353f383b #138 Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.17.0-debian-1.17.0-1 04/01/2014 Workqueue: ksmbd-io handle_ksmbd_work Call Trace: <TASK> dump_stack_lvl+0x44/0x5b process_one_work.cold+0x57/0x5c worker_thread+0x82/0x600 kthread+0x153/0x190 ret_from_fork+0x22/0x30 </TASK> Found by Linux Verification Center (linuxtesting.org).