Unscored severity · published Oct 23, 2026
CVE-2026-98920
netfs: Fix missing alloc tagging of direct mempool allocations
New
–
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: netfs: Fix missing alloc tagging of direct mempool allocations Commit 1d78d56c43ef ("netfs: Fix folio_queue ENOMEM in writeback by adding a mempool") added a mempool for the folio_queues and made the request, subrequest and folio_queue allocations distinguish between writeback and everything else. Writeback is part of memory reclaim and must not fail due to ENOMEM, so it allocates under GFP_NOFS through mempool_alloc(), which may dip into the pool's reserve and, if that runs empty, wait for elements to be returned. The GFP_KERNEL paths, which can return -ENOMEM to their callers, invoke the pool's ->alloc() callback directly instead. The direct call, however, skips the alloc_hooks() wrapper that the mempool_alloc() macro provides. The pool callbacks, mempool_alloc_slab() and mempool_kmalloc(), call kmem_cache_alloc_noprof() and kmalloc_noprof() and rely on current->alloc_tag having been set by the caller. With CONFIG_MEM_ALLOC_PROFILING_DEBUG=y this leads to current->alloc_tag not set WARNING: ./include/linux/alloc_tag.h:161 at __alloc_tagging_slab_alloc_hook alloc_tag was not set WARNING: ./include/linux/alloc_tag.h:166 at __alloc_tagging_slab_free_hook at allocation and free time respectively, as reported when reading files on a CIFS mount. The allocations are also missing from /proc/allocinfo. Wrap the direct ->alloc() invocations in alloc_hooks() with a new mempool_alloc_noreserve() helper in include/linux/mempool.h, next to the other alloc_hooks()-wrapped macros such as mempool_alloc(). The GFP_KERNEL paths keep their failable allocation semantics, they just get tagged now.
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 6% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
LI
Linux · Linux
15ed8a9b7c63e9171f5139a6aaa1ffb61809861f before 5c03da745171485fd181f17b69213464f6d05f3d; 1d78d56c43ef3768183e8370e7367b162700e049 before 37a2042748bc880df03ff8315db86ed82991fbb8; 1d78d56c43ef3768183e8370e7367b162700e049 before b78b728e21c32ec4c330b299f657fb1eb02dffc2; b343252d6f536203dd0660f676190dcbf6d2ecdc; 3f6d7f8a5416d852648d15a05e895f1195ee8a85; 6.12.114 before 6.13; +2 more · source: vendor
Affected product
LI
Linux
Linux
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