CVE-2026-53168: fuse: reject fuse_notify() pagecache ops on directories

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-06-25 · updated 2026-10-15

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fuse: reject fuse_notify() pagecache ops on directories The operations FUSE_NOTIFY_STORE and FUSE_NOTIFY_RETRIEVE allow the FUSE daemon to actively write/read pagecache contents. For directories with FOPEN_CACHE_DIR, the pagecache is used as kernel-internal cache storage, and userspace is not supposed to have direct access to this cache - in particular, fuse_parse_cache() will hit WARN_ON() if the cache contains bogus data. Reject FUSE_NOTIFY_STORE and FUSE_NOTIFY_RETRIEVE on anything other than regular files with -EINVAL.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 4.20 before 5.10.259; from 5.11 before 5.15.210; from 5.16 before 6.1.176; from 6.2 before 6.6.143; from 6.7 before 6.12.94; from 6.13 before 6.18.36 — fixed in 5.10.259, 5.15.210, 6.1.176, 6.12.94, 6.18.36, 6.6.143

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.10.259, 5.15.210, 6.1.176, 6.12.94. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2026-53168 or the next vulnerability affects your stack