high · 7.5

ntfs: skip extent mft records in writeback to prevent deadlock

CVE-2026-72203 · published 15 Aug 2026

How serious is it

  • Severity: high, CVSS score 7.5 out of 10.
  • No exploit prediction (EPSS) score yet.
  • Not on the CISA list of exploited vulnerabilities.
  • No public exploit in Exploit-DB.

Is your app affected by CVE-2026-72203?

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Who is affected

  • Linux Linux: 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to < 6626fb859f4c4772f2f59751d23937716e03f98f, 1da177e4c3f41524e886b7f1b8a0c1fc7321cac2 to < 7ffa8f3d30236e0ab897c30bdb01224ff1fe1c89, 1e9ea7e04472d4e5e12e58c881eaacfb3e49b669 to < f831ab09d521898bf1dd99bf5adfd630ea1428e3, 1e9ea7e04472d4e5e12e58c881eaacfb3e49b669 to < 76bc14c7097ff678b2b5dbfd4fa33b46897d87ce
  • Linux Linux: 2.6.12, 7.1

How to check

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How to fix

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  1. Apply the vendor's update or mitigation from the references below. If there is none yet, limit exposure of the affected service until there is.
  2. If a vulnerable version was live, check your logs and rotate the secrets that server could read.

The advisory

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ntfs: skip extent mft records in writeback to prevent deadlock This patch fixes the ABBA deadlock between extent_lock and extent mrec_lock triggered by xfstests generic/113, that occurs since the commit 6994acf33bae ("ntfs: use base mft_no when looking up base inode for extent record"). Path A (inode writeback): VFS writeback -> ntfs_write_inode() -> __ntfs_write_inode() -> mutex_lock(&ni->extent_lock) -> mutex_lock(&tni->mrec_lock) Path B (MFT folio writeback): VFS writeback of $MFT dirty folios -> ntfs_mft_writepages() -> ntfs_write_mft_block() -> ntfs_may_write_mft_record() -> holds one extent mrec_lock from a previous iteration -> tries to acquire another base inode extent_lock By removing all extent_lock and extent mrec_lock acquisition from the MFT folio writeback path, the ABBA lock ordering is eliminated: Path A: __ntfs_write_inode(): extent_lock -> mrec_lock Path B (removed): ntfs_write_mft_block(): mrec_lock -> extent_lock Path B is always redundant for extent records because: 1. mark_mft_record_dirty(ext_ni) does NOT dirty the MFT folio. It only sets NInoDirty(ext_ni) and marks the base VFS inode dirty via __mark_inode_dirty(I_DIRTY_DATASYNC), which triggers Path A. Therefore, normal extent modifications never create a situation where the MFT folio is dirty and Path B is not scheduled. 2. The MFT folio only gets dirtied via ntfs_mft_mark_dirty() inside ntfs_mft_record_alloc(). But all identified callers in attrib.c (ntfs_attr_add, ntfs_attr_record_move_away, ntfs_attr_make_non_resident, ntfs_attr_record_resize) follow through with mark_mft_record_dirty(), which triggers Path A to write the complete record. 3. ntfs_evict_big_inode() calls ntfs_commit_inode() before freeing extent inodes, ensuring all dirty extents are flushed via Path A before the base inode leaves the icache.

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References

Merged from CVE List. Last updated 25 Oct 2026. All vulnerabilities · RSS · JSON