Copyright © 2012 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. Moderate 2026-09-11T00:00:00 kernel: audit: avoid dropping live tree ref on fsnotify rule autoremove 7.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H CWE-825

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: audit: avoid dropping live tree ref on fsnotify rule autoremove audit_del_rule() is used for both netlink deletion templates and internal fsnotify autoremove. The former passes a parsed template which owns a temporary tree reference; the latter passes the installed entry itself. The unconditional audit_put_tree() at the end of audit_del_rule() assumes the template case. For mixed AUDIT_DIR plus AUDIT_EXE rules, an fsnotify autoremove event therefore drops the installed rule's live tree reference. Repeating this across rules sharing the same tree can free the tree while another rule still references it, and a later autoremove dereferences the freed pathname while comparing rules. Move the temporary-tree put to audit_rule_change(), the caller that owns deletion templates. Keep it in the AUDIT_DEL_RULE cleanup so both successful deletion and -ENOENT still release the parser-owned tree. [PM: dropped unnecessary comment for line length reasons]

A flaw was found in the Linux kernel's audit subsystem. When `fsnotify` rules are automatically removed, the system incorrectly manages memory references, leading to a situation where freed memory can be accessed again. This memory corruption vulnerability could allow a local attacker to cause a system crash, leading to a denial of service.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 Affected kernel-rt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Out of support scope kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Affected kernel-rt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Affected kernel-rt Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Affected kernel Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 Affected kernel-rt Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 Affected openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 Affected openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-89643 https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-89643 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/security/vulns.git/plain/cve/published/2026/CVE-2026-89643.mbox