MediumCVE-2026-98996

    Linux Kernel: security vulnerability (CVE-2026-98996)

    Published Last modified Sources: Msrc Update Guide, CVE.org, BSI

    What is affected, what to do

    In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fs: don't silently unmount busy mounts The propagate_mount_busy() helper exists to decide whether a synchronous can suceed. It does that by looking at the copies of the victims in the mounts its parent propagates to.

    The available sources name no fixed version. Check the vendor guidance in the references below.

    Conflicting version data — version display is hidden until the data is resolved.

    Not sure whether and how you are affected? Ask a question about this vulnerability

    Metrics

    6.3

    Priority

    XIEM Effective CVSS: highest available CVSS rating from NVD and vendor data.

    Source: Vendor (CNA), CVSS v3

    6.3

    CVSS v3

    Severity Medium on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: Msrc Update Guide, CVE.org, BSI

    0.2 %

    EPSS score

    Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 5.9

    Show all metrics
    Severity
    Medium
    Priority (0–325)

    The priority score is a consolidated metric that condenses several individual signals into a single, action-guiding ranking: technical severity (CVSS), exploitation likelihood (EPSS), known-exploited status (KEV) and the context of the affected asset. The aim is to answer the only truly important question in vulnerability management: what first?

    Read in glossary
    61.78 Methodology
    Exploit maturity

    An exploit is code or a technique that specifically uses a concrete vulnerability to force unintended behaviour — such as executing code or escalating privileges. It is the tool that turns a theoretical flaw into a practical attack.

    Read in glossary
    no public PoC known
    XIEM Effective CVSS

    XIEM® is the tiered managed-security operating model from NEOSEC and a registered trademark of NEOSEC GmbH. It extends classic SIEM — the central collection, normalisation and correlation of security-relevant events — with endpoint forensics, network visibility and deception technology, and consolidates them into three building tiers: Sentry, Orchestrate and Command.

    Read in glossary
    6.3 Methodology
    CVSS v3

    CVSS is the globally established, open standard for assessing the technical severity of a vulnerability on a scale from 0 to 10. It describes how easily a flaw can be exploited and what damage it can cause — but not how likely its actual exploitation is. CVSS and the complementary EPSS deliberately answer different questions.

    Read in glossary
    6.3
    EPSS score

    The EPSS score is the absolute model output for an individual vulnerability: the estimated probability of real-world exploitation within the next 30 days, expressed as a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. 0 % to 100 %). A score of 0.42 means „the model estimates a 42 % chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days“.

    Read in glossary
    0.2 %
    Low — model estimates < 1% exploitation likelihood.
    EPSS percentile

    The EPSS percentile is the relative position of a vulnerability within all EPSS-scored CVEs, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A percentile of 0.90 means „this CVE has a higher EPSS score than 90 % of all other scored CVEs“. Unlike the EPSS score, it is not a probability — but a positioning within a ranking.

    Read in glossary
    5.9
    Low — this CVE sits in the lower 10% of all CVEs scored today.
    KEV status

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    —
    Published

    Detection rules

    No NEOSEC detection rule is available for this vulnerability yet.

    Classification under NIS2 and CRA

    Rule-based classification from exploitation status and severity. It does not replace a case-by-case assessment.

    NIS2

    NIS2 is EU Directive (EU) 2022/2555 to raise the level of cybersecurity across the Union. It substantially broadens obligations compared with the first NIS directive: more sectors, mandatory risk management, staged reporting duties and personal accountability of senior management.

    Read in glossary
    Handle the vulnerability in regular vulnerability handling under Art. 21(2)(e) NIS2.
    CRA

    The CRA is EU Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 setting horizontal cybersecurity requirements for „products with digital elements“ — from industrial controllers and software to connected consumer devices. For the first time manufacturers must ensure security across the entire product lifecycle, handle vulnerabilities and provide security updates.

    Read in glossary
    From 11.12.2027, Annex I Part II CRA requires manufacturers of affected products with digital elements to handle vulnerabilities without delay and provide security updates.
    ISO/IEC 27001

    ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally leading standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It describes a risk-based, process-oriented framework to systematically plan, implement, review and improve information security.

    Read in glossary
    Control A.8.8, management of technical vulnerabilities: assess relevance to your systems, plan remediation and keep evidence.

    Description

    In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fs: don't silently unmount busy mounts The propagate_mount_busy() helper exists to decide whether a synchronous can suceed. It does that by looking at the copies of the victims in the mounts its parent propagates to. One of those functions from propagation hell. It skips a copy that has child mounts except for the case of a single child mount covering the copy's root. That algorithm used to be exact. It isn't anymore. Originally only childless copies were unmounted during propagation. And 1064f874abc0 ("mnt: Tuck mounts under others instead of creating shadow/side mounts.") ended up adding covered mounts to both sides in one go. Along came 99b19d16471e ("mnt: In propgate_umount handle visiting mounts in any order") and that started to unmount more than before: [1]: A copy of a mount is unmounted when each of its children is either its overmount or a copy of the victim itself. In the former case the overmount gets reparented. In the latter case the copy of the victim will end up being unmounted. So propagate_umount() ended up being rewritten without adjusting propagate_mount_busy(). And currently propagate_mount_busy() doesn't look at copies of the victim that have two or more children nor a single child that is not the overmount. So any such copy in [1] is not checked for references. The result is that a synchronous unmount succeeds, pulling out a mount that is still in use. A container can run into this with its own mounts. The host shares a tree with the container and the host has a mount in that tree: mount -t tmpfs none /mnt mount --make-shared /mnt mount -t tmpfs none /mnt/a The container's /mnt is a slave copy of the host mount. The container now takes a detached copy of the tree and mounts that copy beneath its propagated copy of /mnt/a and keeps the file descriptor to the tree open: unshare -m --propagation unchanged mount --make-rslave / fd = open_tree(AT_FDCWD, "/mnt", OPEN_TREE_CLONE | AT_RECURSIVE) move_mount(fd, "", AT_FDCWD, "/mnt/a", MOVE_MOUNT_BENEATH) grep /mnt /proc/self/mountinfo 775 355 ... /mnt ... master:646 777 775 ... /mnt/a ... master:646 776 777 ... /mnt/a ... master:647 778 777 ... /mnt/a/a ... master:647 The now attached tree (777) is now mounted beneath the container's copy of /mnt/a. That's also where the host mount sits (as seen from the host mount namespace). So the propagated copy (776) of the host's mount is on top of its root and the copy of that (778) is inside it. Now the host runs: umount /mnt/a and it succeeds. The moved tree tree and the copy inside of it are gone from the container. Now only the propagated copy is left and it got reparented to where it was before: grep /mnt /proc/self/mountinfo 775 355 ... /mnt ... master:646 776 775 ... /mnt/a ... But the file descriptor still refers to the moved tree. So a synchronous umount detached a mount that is still in use. Teach propagate_mount_busy() the same checks that propagate_umount() does. It now checks for a single victim mount without children for which it can assume that MNT_LOCKED is cleared on every copy like propagate_umount() does. The copies form chains. IOW, when a copy itself receives propagation from the victim's parent then the mount at the same mountpoint inside that copy is a copy as well. Whether a mount receives propagation from the victim's can simply be checked by walking its masters. Walk each chain once from its top so we are sure that nested copies stay linear. Check every reference once of every copy that gets unmounted.

    Source: Microsoft Security Update Guide, cvelistv5, NVD (NIST), BSI CSAF, BSI WID Portal

    Affected products

    The following versions are affected. Older releases of the same product line are also vulnerable unless stated otherwise.

    Affected products
    Affected versionsFixed in
    LinuxLinux
    • 6.19 – < 7.2.11
    • 4.13 – < 6.18.57
    • 4.12.3 – < 4.13
    • —
    • 4.4.78 – < 4.5
    • 4.11.12 – < 4.12
    • 4.1.43 – < 4.2
    • 4.9.39 – < 4.10
    • 7.2.11
    • 6.18.57
    • 4.13
    • 7.3
    • 4.5
    • 4.12
    • 4.2
    • 4.10

    Vendors and products

    References & sources

    Changes to this CVE

    Who changed this CVE and when: NVD (analysis, affected products, CVSS), the CVE publisher (CNA) and additional providers such as CISA (ADP).

    1. ReceivedLinux

      Description added or changed

      Show 5 original changes
      Individual changes of this event as published by NVD
      TypeActionBeforeAfter
      Descriptionadded
      —
      In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: fs: don't silently unmount busy mounts The propagate_mount_busy() helper exists to decide whether a synchronous can suceed. It does that by looking at the copies of the victims in the mounts its parent propagates to. One of those functions from propagation hell. It skips a copy that has child mounts except for the case of a single child mount covering the copy's root. That algorithm used to be exact. It isn't anymore. Originally only childless copies were unmounted during propagation. And 1064f874abc0 ("mnt: Tuck mounts under others instead of creating shadow/side mounts.") ended up adding covered mounts to both sides in one go. Along came 99b19d16471e ("mnt: In propgate_umount handle visiting mounts in any order") and that started to unmount more than before: [1]: A copy of a mount is unmounted when each of its children is either its overmount or a copy of the victim itself. In the former case the overmount gets reparented. In the latter case the copy of the victim will end up being unmounted. So propagate_umount() ended up being rewritten without adjusting propagate_mount_busy(). And currently propagate_mount_busy() doesn't look at copies of the victim that have two or more children nor a single child that is not the overmount. So any such copy in [1] is not checked for references. The result is that a synchronous unmount succeeds, pulling out a mount that is still in use. A container can run into this with its own mounts. The host shares a tree with the container and the host has a mount in that tree: mount -t tmpfs none /mnt mount --make-shared /mnt mount -t tmpfs none /mnt/a The container's /mnt is a slave copy of the host mount. The container now takes a detached copy of the tree and mounts that copy beneath its propagated copy of /mnt/a and keeps the file descriptor to the tree open: unshare -m --propagation unchanged mount --make-rslave / fd = open_tree(AT_FDCWD, "/mnt", OPEN_TREE_CLONE | AT_RECURSIVE) move_mount(fd, "", AT_FDCWD, "/mnt/a", MOVE_MOUNT_BENEATH) grep /mnt /proc/self/mountinfo 775 355 ... /mnt ... master:646 777 775 ... /mnt/a ... master:646 776 777 ... /mnt/a ... master:647 778 777 ... /mnt/a/a ... master:647 The now attached tree (777) is now mounted beneath the container's copy of /mnt/a. That's also where the host mount sits (as seen from the host mount namespace). So the propagated copy (776) of the host's mount is on top of its root and the copy of that (778) is inside it. Now the host runs: umount /mnt/a and it succeeds. The moved tree tree and the copy inside of it are gone from the container. Now only the propagated copy is left and it got reparented to where it was before: grep /mnt /proc/self/mountinfo 775 355 ... /mnt ... master:646 776 775 ... /mnt/a ... But the file descriptor still refers to the moved tree. So a synchronous umount detached a mount that is still in use. Teach propagate_mount_busy() the same checks that propagate_umount() does. It now checks for a single victim mount without children for which it can assume that MNT_LOCKED is cleared on every copy like propagate_umount() does. The copies form chains. IOW, when a copy itself receives propagation from the victim's parent then the mount at the same mountpoint inside that copy is a copy as well. Whether a mount receives propagation from the victim's can simply be checked by walking its masters. Walk each chain once from its top so we are sure that nested copies stay linear. Check every reference once of every copy that gets unmounted.
      Affected versions (publisher)added
      —
      New affected value received. <a href="https://github.com/CVEProject/cvelistV5/blob/main/cves/2026/98xxx/CVE-2026-98996.json">CVE-2026-98996</a>
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/6857e209015f95be7a8f19a9cd5dac345b9b9859
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a210ac218c307513d43e98a08f23c2dfbeeebc2f
      Referenceadded
      —
      https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/bf2c8dec26fb792876b5e9bde7030c45d8be3908

      Source identifier: 416baaa9-dc9f-4396-8d5f-8c081fb06d67

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