CVE-2026-72315: smb: client: fix busy dentry warning on unmount after DIO

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-08-15 · updated 2026-10-03

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: smb: client: fix busy dentry warning on unmount after DIO Commit c68337442f03 ("cifs: Fix busy dentry used after unmounting") fixed the issue in cifs where deferred close of a file led to a dentry reference count not being released in umount, by flushing deferredclose_wq in cifs_kill_sb() to solve it. However, the cifs DIO path suffers from the same busy-dentry problem caused by a delayed dentry reference-count release: [dio] [cifsd] [close + umount] netfs_unbuffered_write_iter_locked ... cifs_demultiplex_thread netfs_unbuffered_write cifs_issue_write netfs_wait_for_in_progress_stream [1] ... netfs_write_subrequest_terminated netfs_subreq_clear_in_progress netfs_wake_collector // wake [1] netfs_put_subrequest netfs_put_request queue_work(system_dfl_wq, xxx) [2] // dio write return cifs_close _cifsFileInfo_put // cfile->count 2->1 --cfile->count [3] // umount cifs_kill_sb kill_anon_super // warning triggered! shrink_dcache_for_umount [4] [system_dfl_wq] [5] netfs_free_request ... _cifsFileInfo_put // cfile->count 1->0 --cfile->count queue_work(fileinfo_put_wq, xxx) [fileinfo_put_wq] [6] cifsFileInfo_put_work cifsFileInfo_put_final dput If the umount path is triggered before [5], it results warning: BUG: Dentry 00000000eab1f070{i=9a917b66ae404fec,n=test} still in use (1) [unmount of cifs cifs] The existing per-inode ictx->io_count wait in cifs_evict_inode() does not help: it lives in the inode eviction path, which runs after shrink_dcache_for_umount() has already warned about the busy dentries. Fix it by adding a per-superblock outstanding-rreq counter that is incremented in cifs_init_request() and decremented in cifs_free_request(). In cifs_kill_sb(), before kill_anon_super(), wait for this counter to reach 0 - which guarantees that all cleanup_work for this sb have run and thus all relevant cfile puts are queued on fileinfo_put_wq or serverclose_wq. Then drain the workqueue so the dentry refs are dropped. This is a targeted wait, not a flush of the system-wide system_dfl_wq.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 6.12.78 before 6.12.112; from 6.18.20 before 6.18.54; from 6.1.167 before 6.2; from 6.6.130 before 6.7; from 6.19.10 before 6.20; 7.0 — fixed in 6.12.112, 6.18.54, 6.2, 6.20, 6.7, 7.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 6.12.112, 6.18.54, 6.2, 6.20. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

In the news

ZDI-26-836: Linux Kernel CIFS File System Use-After-Free Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

References

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