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CVE-2025-71072 High

shmem: fix recovery on rename failures

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: shmem: fix recovery on rename failures maple_tree insertions can fail if we are seriously short on memory; simple_offset_rename() does not recover well if it runs into that. The same goes for simple_offset_rename_exchange(). Moreover, shmem_whiteout() expects that if it succeeds, the caller will progress to d_move(), i.e. that shmem_rename2() won't fail past the successful call of shmem_whiteout(). Not hard to fix, fortunately - mtree_store() can't fail if the index we are trying to store into is already present in the tree as a singleton. For simple_offset_rename_exchange() that's enough - we just need to be careful about the order of operations. For simple_offset_rename() solution is to preinsert the target into the tree for new_dir; the rest can be done without any potentially failing operations. That preinsertion has to be done in shmem_rename2() rather than in simple_offset_rename() itself - otherwise we'd need to deal with the possibility of failure after successful shmem_whiteout().

Exploit probability 0.2%
Published January 13, 2026
Required by Not available
Last source change August 13, 2026

02 / AFFECTED SOFTWARE

Affected packages

Linux Kernel
Unknown Unknown

03 / CONNECTIONS

Connected vulnerabilities

04 / EVIDENCE

Source records

Open Source Vulnerabilities CVE-2025-71072

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: shmem: fix recovery on rename failures maple_tree insertions can fail if we are seriously short on memory; simple_offset_rename() does not recover well if it runs into that. The same goes for simple_offset_rename_exchange(). Moreover, shmem_whiteout() expects that if it succeeds, the caller will progress to d_move(), i.e. that shmem_rename2() won't fail past the successful call of shmem_whiteout(). Not hard to fix, fortunately - mtree_store() can't fail if the index we are trying to store into is already present in the tree as a singleton. For simple_offset_rename_exchange() that's enough - we just need to be careful about the order of operations. For simple_offset_rename() solution is to preinsert the target into the tree for new_dir; the rest can be done without any potentially failing operations. That preinsertion has to be done in shmem_rename2() rather than in simple_offset_rename() itself - otherwise we'd need to deal with the possibility of failure after successful shmem_whiteout().

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05 / REFERENCES

Further evidence