CVE-2026-93095: hfsplus: validate thread record before delete key rebuild

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: 2026-09-17 · updated 2026-10-19

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: hfsplus: validate thread record before delete key rebuild hfsplus_delete_cat() is called with str == NULL when the last open reference to an unlinked HFS+ hardlink backing inode is closed. In that case, the function finds the catalog thread by CNID and rebuilds the catalog key from thread.nodeName. That reconstruction path reads thread.nodeName.length directly from the catalog B-tree into fd.search_key and then copies length * 2 bytes into fd.search_key->cat.name.unicode. It does not first check that the found record is a thread record or that its size matches the thread name. A corrupted image can therefore provide an oversized thread name length and make hfs_bnode_read() write past the catalog search-key allocation. Read the CNID record through hfsplus_brec_read_cat(), which bounds the record read to sizeof(hfsplus_cat_entry) and verifies that a thread record's size exactly matches nodeName.length. Together, these checks ensure an accepted thread name fits HFSPLUS_MAX_STRLEN. Reject non-thread records before building the delete key from the validated thread name. Share the thread-record-type helper between hfsplus_find_cat() and hfsplus_delete_cat().

Affected products

Linux kernel: 2.6.12 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 7.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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