Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2026-89767

high Nessus Plugin ID 345236

Synopsis

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed with a vulnerability that the vendor indicates will not be patched.

Description

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

- ovl: fix double end_creating() on the casefold-mismatch path ovl_create_real() releases the new dentry twice when the casefold consistency check fails. The S_IFDIR branch calls end_creating() and sets err, then falls through to the common out: label which calls end_creating() on the same dentry again: case S_IFDIR: newdentry = ovl_do_mkdir(ofs, dir, newdentry, attr->mode); err = PTR_ERR_OR_ZERO(newdentry); if (!err && ofs->casefold != ovl_dentry_casefolded(newdentry)) { pr_warn_ratelimited(...);
end_creating(newdentry); /* first */ err = -EINVAL; } break; ... if (err) goto out; ... out: if (err) { end_creating(newdentry); /* second, same dentry */ return ERR_PTR(err); } end_creating() is end_dirop(), which does inode_unlock() on the parent and dput() on the dentry, so the parent directory's i_rwsem is unlocked twice and the dentry is put twice. The second unlock releases a lock that is not held, which is what wedges every later creation under that parent, and the second dput() drops a reference that was never taken. The branch was added by commit dfc7da402ccc (ovl: Check for casefold consistency when creating new dentries) as a bare dput(), which already released the reference twice; commit fe497f0759e0 (VFS: change vfs_mkdir() to unlock on failure.) converted both sites to end_creating(), adding the double unlock. This is reachable by an unprivileged user. The casefold consistency of the layers is validated at mount time in ovl_parse_layer(), and again on every lookup in ovl_lookup_single(), but ofs->workdir is the internal work subdirectory created inside the user-supplied workdir, and that subdirectory is not re-checked.
Marking it casefolded after the mount therefore makes every ovl_create_temp() inherit the wrong state - and that path reaches ovl_create_real() through ovl_start_creating_temp(), which uses start_creating() with a generated name and so never runs the lookup-time check. unshare -Urm mount -t tmpfs -o casefold=utf8-12.1.0 tmpfs mnt mkdir -p mnt/lower/d mnt/upper mnt/work mnt/merged mount -t overlay ovl -o lowerdir=mnt/lower,\ upperdir=mnt/upper,workdir=mnt/work mnt/merged chattr +F mnt/work/work mkdir mnt/merged/d/sub # directory copy-up overlayfs: wrong inherited casefold (work/#5) and the next copy-up blocks forever on the parent's i_rwsem: mkdir D start_creating+0x65/0xb0 ovl_start_creating_temp+0xb0/0xe0 [overlay] ovl_create_temp+0xa3/0x1d0 [overlay] ovl_copy_up_one+0x1f1c/0x21c0 [overlay] ovl_copy_up_flags+0xf5/0x140 [overlay] ovl_create_object+0xb7/0x220 [overlay] ovl_mkdir+0x23/0x40 [overlay] Drop the end_creating() from the branch and let out: own the cleanup, which is what every other error path in this function already does. (CVE-2026-89767)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

Solution

There is no known solution at this time.

See Also

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-89767

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 345236

File Name: unpatched_CVE_2026_89767.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Family: Misc.

Published: 9/12/2026

Updated: 9/12/2026

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 4.3

Percentile: 53.43

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Low

Base Score: 2.1

Temporal Score: 1.8

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-89767

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.1

Temporal Score: 6.5

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:U/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:14.0, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:linux

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/cpu, global_settings/vendor_unpatched, Host/OS/identifier

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 9/11/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-89767