CVE-2026-53390: ksmbd: fix out-of-bounds read in smb_check_perm_dacl()

Severity: high (CVSS 8.1 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-07-19 · updated 2026-08-17
Weakness: CWE-125

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ksmbd: fix out-of-bounds read in smb_check_perm_dacl() The permission-check ACE walk in smb_check_perm_dacl() validates the ACE header size and caps sid.num_subauth at SID_MAX_SUB_AUTHORITIES, but it never checks that ace->size is actually large enough to contain num_subauth sub-authorities before compare_sids() dereferences them. CIFS_SID_BASE_SIZE covers the SID header up to but excluding the sub_auth[] array, and offsetof(struct smb_ace, sid) is the ACE header, so the existing guards only guarantee the 8-byte SID base, i.e. zero sub-authorities. compare_sids() then reads ace->sid.sub_auth[i] for i < min(local_sid->num_subauth, ace->sid.num_subauth). The local comparison SIDs (sid_everyone, sid_unix_NFS_mode, and the id_to_sid() result) always have at least one sub-authority, and an attacker controls the ACE revision and authority bytes (which lie within the in-bounds SID base), so they can match one of those SIDs and force the sub_auth read. A crafted ACE with size == 16 and num_subauth >= 1 placed at the tail of the security descriptor therefore causes a heap out-of-bounds read of up to SID_MAX_SUB_AUTHORITIES * sizeof(__le32) bytes past the pntsd allocation. The security descriptor is loaded by ksmbd_vfs_get_sd_xattr() into a buffer sized exactly to the on-disk data (kzalloc(sd_size) in ndr_decode_v4_ntacl()), so the read lands past the allocation. The malformed descriptor can be stored verbatim via SMB2_SET_INFO (the DACL is not normalised before being written to the security.NTACL xattr) and the read fires on a subsequent SMB2_CREATE access check, making this reachable by an authenticated client on a share that uses ACL xattrs. Add the missing num_subauth-versus-ace_size check, mirroring the identical guards already present in the sibling parsers parse_dacl() and smb_inherit_dacl().

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 5.15.210 before 5.15.212; from 6.6.140 before 6.6.144; from 6.12.84 before 6.12.95; from 6.18.25 before 6.18.38; from 7.0.2 before 7.1.3; 6.1.176 — fixed in 5.15.212, 6.12.95, 6.18.38, 6.6.144, 7.1.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 5.15.212, 6.12.95, 6.18.38, 6.6.144. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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