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HIGH

fs/resctrl: Fix use-after-free during unmount

Published Aug 15, 2026

Description

During unmount or failure teardown all mon_data structures that contain monitoring event file private data are freed after which kernfs nodes are removed. However, the RDT_DELETED flag is never set for the statically allocated default resource group.

A concurrent reader of an event file associated with the default resource group may, after dropping kernfs active protection, block on rdtgroup_mutex while unmount proceeds to free the file private data and destroy the kernfs node without waiting for the reader.

When the mutex is released, the reader wakes up, observes that RDT_DELETED is not set for the default group, and dereferences the already-freed file private data.

The scenario can be depicted as follows: CPU0 CPU1 /* * Default resource group's * monitoring data accessible via * kernfs file with kernfs_node::priv * pointing to a struct mon_data. * User opens the file for reading. */ rdtgroup_mondata_show() /* arch encounters fatal error */ rdtgroup_kn_lock_live() resctrl_exit() atomic_inc(&rdtgroup_default.waitcount) cpus_read_lock() kernfs_break_active_protection(kn) mutex_lock(&rdtgroup_mutex) cpus_read_lock() resctrl_fs_teardown() mutex_lock(&rdtgroup_mutex) rmdir_all_sub() mon_put_kn_priv() /* Delete all mon_data structures */ rdtgroup_destroy_root() kernfs_destroy_root() rdtgroup_default.kn = NULL mutex_unlock(&rdtgroup_mutex) /* * rdtgroup_default.flags is empty so * rdtgroup_kn_lock_live() returns * &rdtgroup_default */ md = of->kn->priv;

/* md points to freed mon_data */

Set RDT_DELETED for the default group unconditionally since the flag does not lead to the freeing of this statically allocated group.

Do not allow a new resctrl mount if there are any waiters on default group of previous mount. A new mount will re-initialize the default group that would appear to waiters from previous mount as though the default group is accessible causing them to access the mon_data structures from the previous mount that have been removed.

Affected products

Remediation

No remediation recorded yet.

Metrics

Weaknesses (1)

References (8)

Change history (0)

No recorded changes yet.

Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner Linux
Published Aug 15, 2026
Updated Aug 17, 2026
Reserved Aug 9, 2026
NVD
Status Received
Modified Aug 17, 2026
Red Hat
Severity Moderate
Public date Aug 15, 2026