CVE-2026-98141: ntfs: propagate reparse index insertion failure

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-09-25 · updated 2026-10-27
Weakness: CWE-252

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: ntfs: propagate reparse index insertion failure update_reparse_data() ignores the return value of set_reparse_index(). When index insertion fails, the code removes the just-written reparse data as cleanup but still returns 0, so symlink(2) (and WSL special file creation) reports success while no reparse data exists on disk. When there was no previous reparse data (oldsize == 0), the failure was likewise silently ignored. Propagate the error to the caller.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 7.1 before 7.2.7; 7.3-rc1 — fixed in 7.2.7
Linux kernel: 7.1 — fixed in 7.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 7.2.7; Linux kernel 7.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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