CVE-2026-89485: Linux

Critical severity, CVSS 9.8. EPSS: 0.7% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: lockd: pin next file across nlm_inspect_file lock-drop nlm_traverse_files() pins the current file with f_count++ across a mutex_unlock for nlm_inspect_file(), but nothing pins the saved next pointer. A concurrent nlm_release_file() can kfree the next file during the unlock window, and the iterator dereferences freed memory on the next loop step. Pin both current and next before the lock-drop. Advance by swapping the pinned cursors at the end of each iteration so next is always held alive across the unlock. Always call nlm_file_release() after dropping the iteration pin, regardless of whether the file matched the predicate. Use nlm_file_inuse(), which does a live walk of the inode lock list, rather than the cached f_locks field, so skipped files that never ran nlm_inspect_file() are evaluated correctly. Because every file in a hash bucket is now pinned and released, files skipped by the is_failover_file predicate that have no locks, blocks, shares, or external references are deleted during traversal. The old code never evaluated skipped files for cleanup. The new behavior is intentional: such files are stale and should not persist in the table.

Affected products

• Linux Linux: from 2.6.18, before 5.10.270 (fixed in 5.10.270); from 5.11, before 5.15.221 (fixed in 5.15.221); from 5.16, before 6.1.188 (fixed in 6.1.188); from 6.2, before 6.6.157 (fixed in 6.6.157); from 6.7, before 6.12.109 (fixed in 6.12.109); from 6.13, before 6.18.50 (fixed in 6.18.50); …

Published 2026-09-11. Last modified 2026-09-14.