What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-72438: md/raid10: fix writes_pending and barrier reference leaks on discard failures

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 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: 2026-08-15 · updated 2026-10-30

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: md/raid10: fix writes_pending and barrier reference leaks on discard failures raid10_make_request() acquires a writes_pending reference with md_write_start() before calling raid10_handle_discard(). Several failure paths in raid10_handle_discard() complete the bio and return without releasing the corresponding reference, causing md_write_end() to be skipped. Call md_write_end() before returning from these failure paths to keep writes_pending accounting balanced. Additionally, discard split allocation failures can occur after wait_barrier() succeeds. Those paths return without calling allow_barrier(), leaking the associated barrier reference. Release the barrier before returning from those paths.

Affected products

• Linux: from 5.15.111 before 5.16 — fixed in 5.16

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux 5.16. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/11b35d1906a7277a3d64afe34224133b44327328
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/2d264c00beadcc67f16d683ab27eed28c047ba2e
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/393d687131d8aa8c7e4de2cb494438e145d20fc2
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/80ac31cce55432034a9eb98262c92ace7866e494
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/d1324b41dabd26787559efaeb430643c627c1eb0
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/fea33968592559a55a3f5a96a6386bebcaf988a8

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