CVE-2026-53064

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

dm cache: fix null-deref with concurrent writes in passthrough mode

In passthrough mode, when dm-cache starts to invalidate a cache entry and bio prison cell lock fails due to concurrent write to the same cached block, mg->cell remains NULL. The error path in invalidate_complete() attempts to unlock and free the cell unconditionally, causing a NULL pointer dereference:

KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000000-0x0000000000000007] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 134 Comm: fio Not tainted 6.19.0-rc7 #3 PREEMPT RIP: 0010:dm_cell_unlock_v2+0x3f/0x210 Call Trace: invalidate_complete+0xef/0x430 map_bio+0x130f/0x1a10 cache_map+0x320/0x6b0 __map_bio+0x458/0x510 dm_submit_bio+0x40e/0x16d0 __submit_bio+0x419/0x870

Reproduce steps:

1. Create a cache device

dmsetup create cmeta –table 0 8192 linear /dev/sdc 0 dmsetup create cdata –table 0 131072 linear /dev/sdc 8192 dmsetup create corig –table 0 262144 linear /dev/sdc 262144 dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/cmeta bs=4k count=1 oflag=direct dmsetup create cache –table 0 262144 cache /dev/mapper/cmeta /dev/mapper/cdata /dev/mapper/corig 128 2 metadata2 writethrough smq 0

2. Promote the first data block into cache

fio –filename=/dev/mapper/cache –name=populate –rw=write –bs=4k –direct=1 –size=64k

3. Reload the cache into passthrough mode

dmsetup suspend cache dmsetup reload cache –table 0 262144 cache /dev/mapper/cmeta /dev/mapper/cdata /dev/mapper/corig 128 2 metadata2 passthrough smq 0 dmsetup resume cache

4. Write to the first cached block concurrently

fio –filename=/dev/mapper/cache –name test –rw=randwrite –bs=4k –randrepeat=0 –direct=1 –numjobs=2 –size 64k

Fix by checking if mg->cell is valid before attempting to unlock it.

Affected Software

References

• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/01264a6a3a3ad7ac1d73443299cd5a9568002454
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/0aa745fea1f8dc81bcdd0a45e215b6706727b482
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/25dcc1989c194ba2b5fb6d03cbb9b83814ac0d15
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/7d1f98d668ee34c1d15bdc0420fdd062f24a27c0
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/a2635d541a93fd111e743cf14b6275dc81be2abc
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/c7fb6bc864c4910b344dafa36dd5028e9b980768
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/df3b8ef06cc62de4fca5d2108e285085b3cffd44
• https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/ee38fb00e1a80f46a4990e38f25ecb04ae7b7417