Copyright © 2012 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. Moderate 2026-06-25T00:00:00 kernel: VFS: fix possible failure to unlock in nfsd4_create_file() 7.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H CWE-772

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: VFS: fix possible failure to unlock in nfsd4_create_file() atomic_create() in fs/namei.c drops the reference to the dentry when it returns an error. This behaviour was imported into dentry_create() so that it will drop the reference if an error is returned from atomic_create(), though not if vfs_create() returns an error (in the case where ->atomic_create is not supported). The caller - nfsd4_create_file() - is made aware of this by checking path->dentry, which will either be a counted reference to a dentry, or an error pointer. However the change to use start_creating()/end_creating() (which landed shortly before the dentry_create() change landed, though was likely developed around the same time) means that nfsd4_create_file() *needs* a valid dentry so that it can unlock the parent. The net result is that if NFSD exports a filesystem which uses ->atomic_create, and if a call to ->atomic_create returns an error, then nfsd4_create_file() will pass an error pointer to end_creating() and the parent will not be unlocked. Fix this by changing dentry_create() to make sure path->dentry is always a valid dentry, never an error-pointer. The actual error is already returned a different way. Note that if ->atomic_create() returns a different dentry (which may not be possible in practice) we are guaranteed (because it is only ever provided by d_spliace_alias()) that it will have the same d_parent and so it will have the same effect when passed to end_creating().

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's Network File System Daemon (NFSD) component. When NFSD exports a filesystem utilizing `atomic_create`, an error during `atomic_create()` processing can result in `nfsd4_create_file()` failing to unlock the parent directory. This resource management issue may lead to resource exhaustion, potentially causing a Denial of Service (DoS) for affected systems.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Out of support scope kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Not affected kernel-rt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Not affected kernel-rt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Not affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Not affected kernel-rt https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-53244 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-53244 https://lore.kernel.org/linux-cve-announce/2026062512-CVE-2026-53244-b4ee@gregkh/T