CVE-2026-92503: vulnerability in Linux
ext4: fix ABBA deadlock in ext4_xattr_inode_cache_find()
Published
3Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.
ssvc Trackepss 0.2%
exploitation probability
0.2%top 91% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
ext4: fix ABBA deadlock in ext4_xattr_inode_cache_find()
Syzbot/stress-ng reported an ABBA deadlock in ext4 when exercising
concurrent xattr workloads (using the ea_inode mount/format option).
The deadlock occurs between the running transaction and the eviction
thread:
- Task 1 (stress-ng): Holds a reference to a shared mbcache_entry (ce)
and calls ext4_xattr_inode_cache_find() -> ext4_iget() to retrieve
the corresponding EA inode. Since the EA inode is currently being
evicted, ext4_iget() blocks in __wait_on_freeing_inode() waiting for
eviction to complete.
- Task 2 (eviction thread): Currently evicting the same EA inode in
ext4_evict_ea_inode(). It calls mb_cache_entry_wait_unused(oe) which
blocks waiting for Task 1 to release the reference to the mbcache_entry.
To break this deadlock, implement a new ext4_iget() configuration flag
named EXT4_IGET_NOWAIT. When set, perform a non-blocking lookup of the
inode via VFS's find_inode_nowait() API.
If the inode is currently being evicted (marked with I_FREEING or
I_WILL_FREE) or created (I_CREATING), or if it is not present in the VFS
inode cache (cache miss), simply skip it (returning -ENOENT) rather than
waiting for eviction/creation to complete, breaking the ABBA cycle.
Since we return -ENOENT immediately on a cache miss, we never attempt to
allocate a new inode or call iget_locked(), completely eliminating any
TOCTOU race window.
If the returned inode is I_NEW, wait for its initialization to clear via
wait_on_new_inode(). If initialization fails and the inode is unhashed
during wait_on_new_inode() waking up (e.g., due to an I/O read error in
another thread), safely drop the reference and return -ENOENT. This
unhashed check is executed unconditionally on all cache-hit pathways to
properly handle concurrent initialization failures.
Finally, standard validation checks (including is_bad_inode,
EXT4_EA_INODE_FL, file_acl, and xattr flags) are executed as normal inside
check_igot_inode() to fully guarantee VFS-layer safety.
In ext4_xattr_inode_cache_find(), invoke ext4_iget() with the new
EXT4_IGET_NOWAIT flag to perform the non-blocking cache search.
Affected products
Linux · LinuxRelated CVEs — Linux
In the same product, most dangerous first.
CVE-2024-53197HIGHALSA: usb-audio: Fix potential out-of-bound accesses for Extigy and Mbox devicesEPSS 4.1%KEVCVE-2026-31431HIGHcrypto: algif_aead - Revert to operating out-of-placeEPSS 3.4%KEVCVE-2024-53104HIGHmedia: uvcvideo: Skip parsing frames of type UVC_VS_UNDEFINED in uvc_parse_formatEPSS 3.4%KEVCVE-2025-39682CRITICALtls: fix handling of zero-length records on the rx_listEPSS 2.9%KEVCVE-2024-36971HIGHnet: fix __dst_negative_advice() raceEPSS 2.7%KEVCVE-2024-53150HIGHALSA: usb-audio: Fix out of bounds reads when finding clock sourcesEPSS 1.4%KEV