What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-72439: md/raid10: fix writes_pending leak on write request failures

• Severity: unknown
• 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 2026-10-30

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: md/raid10: fix writes_pending leak on write request failures raid10_make_request() acquires a writes_pending reference with md_write_start() before dispatching write requests. Several failure paths in raid10_write_request() complete the bio and return without reaching the normal write completion path, causing the corresponding md_write_end() to be skipped. Make raid10_write_request() return a status indicating whether the write request was successfully queued. This allows raid10_make_request() to release the writes_pending reference with md_write_end() when a write request fails.

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/55dc3d1d6a9983867273d3531e3ddd743428db8d
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/b6667d925c274910423385042edf18f6788dbceb
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c642583adc136d4c70ce3c65c3f43e847d26c776
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/e045d6ed33f8faa3e3dd6dc33c62ec01e3ad275d
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f076460c5205c9687059e5a3afeed37d2f2ceb6b
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/f94031c94eaebe14a7c9e91720064de0c5a54a6c

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