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no cvss —

CVE-2026-98979 json

namespace: refuse an automount below a mount that is in no namespace

published 19d ago modified 12d ago also EUVD-2026-108773

cvss
—
not scored
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 11%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

namespace: refuse an automount below a mount that is in no namespace

It's possible to add autmounts even when the parent mount isn't in the mount namespace of the caller. The only requirement we have is that the parent mount namespace must not be NULL, i.e., unmounted.

Problem is that clone_private_mount() has MNT_NS_INTERNAL which makes that trivially true. So that passes the test and attach_recursive_mnt() accepts that as a mount point and funny enough, count_mounts() dereferences MNT_NS_INTERNAL. The problem is it is an error pointer...

So we can reach this in userspace via fanotify. A filesystem mark on the lower filesystem of an overlay reports paths on the layer clone and reading the event hands out a descriptor on it. For example with debugfs as the lower layer it goes kaboom:

openat(evfd, "tracing", O_DIRECTORY)

Oops: general protection fault KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x1d0-0x1d7] RIP: 0010:count_mounts+0x35/0x200 attach_recursive_mnt finish_automount

And since that sleeping beauty happens under namespace_sem held for writing every mount operation on the system blocks from then on. Congrats.

Use is_mounted() instead which rejects unmounted and internal mounts alike. The open fails with EINVAL just as it did before clone_private_mount() used MNT_NS_INTERNAL.

Patch / fix

  • Linux Linux 7.3
  • linux Debian 13 6.12.113-1
  • linux Debian 14 7.2.11-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-98979

  • linux Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-10.10
  • linux-aws Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
  • linux-gcp Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
  • linux-raspi Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
  • linux-riscv Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-10.10.1
  • linux-oracle Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-1004.4
  • linux-realtime Ubuntu 26.10 7.3.0-10.10.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2026-98979

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • kernel Azure Linux 3.0 6.6.161.1-1

azure linux advisories AZL-110810

Azure Linux vulnerability data, Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation, from https://github.com/microsoft/AzureLinuxVulnerabilityData via OSV, under the MIT licence; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. MIT

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Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-98979 updated cvss 4.7

kernel: namespace: refuse an automount below a mount that is in no namespace

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 perf, kernel, python-perf, kernel-kdump, kernel-firmware, kernel-bootwrapper, +1 more
    affected: no fix planned “Out of support scope”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, kernel-core, kernel-tools, +29 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 rv, perf, rtla, kernel, bpftool, libperf, +83 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 kernel Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-8, openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9 Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 5 openshift/ose-rhel-coreos-9
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 perf, kernel, bpftool, kernel-rt, python-perf, kernel-kdump, +8 more
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

0.21% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 11% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

Affected products

  • Linux Linux

Classification

Technology feeds

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.