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CVE-2026-43271

md-cluster: fix NULL pointer dereference in process_metadata_update PUBLISHED

Description (CNA)

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: md-cluster: fix NULL pointer dereference in process_metadata_update The function process_metadata_update() blindly dereferences the 'thread' pointer (acquired via rcu_dereference_protected) within the wait_event() macro. While the code comment states "daemon thread must exist", there is a valid race condition window during the MD array startup sequence (md_run): 1. bitmap_load() is called, which invokes md_cluster_ops->join(). 2. join() starts the "cluster_recv" thread (recv_daemon). 3. At this point, recv_daemon is active and processing messages. 4. However, mddev->thread (the main MD thread) is not initialized until later in md_run(). If a METADATA_UPDATED message is received from a remote node during this specific window, process_metadata_update() will be called while mddev->thread is still NULL, leading to a kernel panic. To fix this, we must validate the 'thread' pointer. If it is NULL, we release the held lock (no_new_dev_lockres) and return early, safely ignoring the update request as the array is not yet fully ready to process it.

Affected (CNA)

Vendor / productVersions
Linux / Linuxaffected 0ba959774e93911caff596de6391f085fb640ac4 before a61c1bc84c4a0f1e7c2fe55b0f43d7d94af4adf1; affected 0ba959774e93911caff596de6391f085fb640ac4 before dec123825c1ed74d98fd5fc7571a851dea4f46ff; affected 0ba959774e93911caff596de6391f085fb640ac4 before 721599e837d3f4c0e6cc14da059612c017b6d3ec; affected 0ba959774e93911caff596de6391f085fb640ac4 before dceb5a843910004cb118148e267036104fc3ee43; affected 0ba959774e93911caff596de6391f085fb640ac4 before f150e753cb8dd756085f46e86f2c35ce472e0a3c
Linux / Linuxaffected 4.12; unaffected 0 before 4.12; unaffected 6.6.128 through 6.6.*; unaffected 6.12.75 through 6.12.*; unaffected 6.18.16 through 6.18.*; unaffected 6.19.6 through 6.19.*; unaffected 7.0 through *

CWE

No CWE identifiers supplied.

References