Medium [CVE-2026-68312] fix cifsFileInfo leak on kmalloc failure in deferred close drain paths
This medium-severity Red Hat Linux advisory covers CVE-2026-68312 affecting Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux for NVIDIA 26.
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Summary
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: cifs: fix cifsFileInfo leak on kmalloc failure in deferred close drain paths In cifs_close_deferred_file(), cifs_close_all_deferred_files(), and cifs_close_deferred_file_under_dentry(), when a pending deferred close is cancelled via cancel_delayed_work(), the subsequent kmalloc_obj() to add the file to the local processing list may fail under memory pressure.
The loop breaks immediately, but the cancelled work is no longer pending (it would have called _cifsFileInfo_put()), and the cfile is never added to file_head for processing. The cifsFileInfo reference and the open server handle both leak.
Fix by saving the cfile that failed allocation in a local variable, breaking as before, and calling _cifsFileInfo_put() on it after releasing the lock. Any files later in the iteration are unaffected since their deferred work is still pending and will fire normally.
A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Common Internet File System (CIFS) implementation. This resource leak could potentially lead to a Denial of Service (DoS) over time due to resource exhaustion.
This issue affects CIFS/SMB client mounts. Systems not mounting CIFS shares are not affected.
Red Hat severity: Moderate — CVSS 5.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H). Weakness: CWE-911.
Affected versions
No affected-version range was extracted from the source record. The vendor advisory is authoritative — check it before change work.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 2 days ago·verify at source
Fixed versions
No fixed release is recorded yet. That does not prove no patch exists — confirm against the vendor advisory.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 2 days ago·verify at source
Mitigation
The source record does not include mitigation steps. That is not a statement that no fix exists — read the vendor advisory below for the authoritative guidance.
Official advisory · medium-confidence parse· fetched 2 days ago·verify at source
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