CVE-2026-72193

What the bug is

A crafted NTFS3 disk image triggers an in-kernel infinite loop at mount time, hanging the mounting thread and firing the soft-lockup watchdog within ~22s on multi-CPU hosts (panic with kernel.softlockup_panic=1). The bug is reachable from desktop USB auto-mount on distributions where udisks2 routes the NTFS signature to the in-tree ntfs3 driver (Arch family and an increasing fraction of Fedora / openSUSE / RHEL deployments); CAP_SYS_ADMIN-class manual mount elsewhere. check_rstbl()'s second walker iterates the free-entry singly-linked list headed by rt->first_free with no upper bound on iteration count: for (off = ff; off;) { if (off == RESTART_ENTRY_ALLOCATED) return false; off = le32_to_cpu(*(__le32 *)Add2Ptr(rt, off)); if (off > ts - sizeof(__le32)) return false; } The existing guards cover three exits: end-of-list (off == 0), the in-use marker (off == RESTART_ENTRY_ALLOCATED), and out-of-bounds (off > ts - sizeof(__le32)). None of the three prevents an in-bounds cycle. A crafted on-disk RESTART_TABLE whose free chain contains a self-loop or A->B->A cycle whose offsets satisfy: - in range [sizeof(struct RESTART_TABLE), ts - sizeof(__le32)] - (off - sizeof(struct RESTART_TABLE)) % rsize == 0 passes all existing guards and spins the mount-time thread forever. Reproduced in UML by hand-forging a 2 MB NTFS3 image whose journal RESTART_TABLE first_free = 0x18 and whose entry at offset 0x18 stores 0x18 as its next pointer; mount of the forged image with the in-tree ntfs3 driver never returns. Bound the walker by rt->used. Each entry on a legitimate free chain is unique, and the total slot count is ne = le16_to_cpu (rt->used). A traversal that visits more than ne slots is by construction malformed; reject it as a corrupt RESTART_TABLE. After this patch, mount of the forged image returns with -EINVAL and a log_replay failure message, and mkntfs-produced legitimate images mount cleanly (verified in the same UML harness).

Where it lives

The fix touches these files. If the subsystem is one you do not use, the practical exposure is lower, though the package is still the vulnerable one.

fs/ntfs3/fslog.c

What this is

NTFS3 FILESYSTEMMAINTAINERS section matched on fs/ntfs3/ · ntfs3@lists.linux.dev · Supported

Kernel module

ntfs3

Check it on the machine

grep -w CONFIG_NTFS3_FS /boot/config-$(uname -r)

Reads the booted kernel's own configuration, on the machine and nowhere else. =y is built in, =m is a module, and an is not set line means the code is not there.

lsmod | grep -w ntfs3

Prints a line if that module is loaded right now, and nothing if it is not. One that is not loaded can still be loaded later by anything that needs it.

Show whether Debian builds this, per release

Debian does not build this code in 3 releases. It does build it in 1 release, so the answer depends on which release the machine runs.

• bookwormn
• trixiem
• forky, sidn

n

not enabled on any flavour - this release does not build the code

m

a loadable module on every flavour - check lsmod, can be blacklisted

Build switch

CONFIG_NTFS3_FS

From the configuration Debian publishes for every kernel flavour it builds. It covers only the architectures Debian ships a linux-config package for, and nothing about a kernel you built yourself. Debian's own status above stays authoritative about the source package.MAINTAINERS kbuild Makefiles Debian linux-config packages

Signals

Published

2026-08-15 (2 months ago)source

CVSS

no vector published, unrated

Attack vector

not published

EPSS

0.21%, higher than 11.0% of all CVEssource

CISA KEV

not listedthe KEV catalogue

Debian urgency

not yet assignedsource

Subsystem

fs/ntfs3

Upstream fixes

The versions the CNA records as introducing and fixing this, and the commit for each. source

Introduced	Fixed in	Commit
5.15	5.15.212	8128bec89507
5.15	6.1.178	7972df425687
5.15	6.6.145	7ac4c86915c2
5.15	6.12.97	29b86dbe88cb
5.15	6.18.40	0fad25687d4d
5.15	7.1.5	d313416280d4
5.15	7.2	9611f644302c