CVE-2026-93201: dm-pcache: validate seg_id fields from persistent memory

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: dm-pcache: validate seg_id fields from persistent memory cache_pos_decode(), cache_key_decode() and the last-kset branches of cache_replay(), the writeback worker and the GC worker take a cache segment id from the cache device metadata and index cache->segments[] with it without checking it against cache->n_segs. That metadata is only CRC-protected with a fixed public seed, so whoever supplies the cache device on a table load (CAP_SYS_ADMIN) controls the id; an out-of-range value forms a wild pcache_cache_segment pointer that is dereferenced and written through -- an out-of-bounds read and write driven by on-disk data. Add cache_seg_id_valid() and reject an out-of-range id at each decode site, failing the operation with -EIO instead of indexing past the array. Bound the id against the initialized-segment count (cache_info.n_segs) rather than the physical device total. A forged cache_info.n_segs below seg_num otherwise leaves segments[cache_info.n_segs..seg_num) as zeroed structs whose data pointer is NULL, so a forged id in that window would still be dereferenced. A later patch guarantees cache_info.n_segs <= seg_num, and a driver-created cache sets the two equal, so valid images are unaffected.

Affected products

Linux kernel: 6.18 — 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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