linux-cve-announce - CVE-2025-40072: fanotify: Validate the return value of mnt_ns_from

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Message-ID: <2025102818-CVE-2025-40072-b9e8@gregkh>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2025 12:48:49 +0100
From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To: linux-cve-announce@...r.kernel.org
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>
Subject: CVE-2025-40072: fanotify: Validate the return value of mnt_ns_from_dentry() before dereferencing

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...nel.org>

Description
===========

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

fanotify: Validate the return value of mnt_ns_from_dentry() before dereferencing

The function do_fanotify_mark() does not validate if
mnt_ns_from_dentry() returns NULL before dereferencing mntns->user_ns.
This causes a NULL pointer dereference in do_fanotify_mark() if the
path is not a mount namespace object.

Fix this by checking mnt_ns_from_dentry()'s return value before
dereferencing it.

Before the patch

$ gcc fanotify_nullptr.c -o fanotify_nullptr
$ mkdir A
$ ./fanotify_nullptr
Fanotify fd: 3
fanotify_mark: Operation not permitted
$ unshare -Urm
Fanotify fd: 3
Killed

int main(void){
    int ffd;
    ffd = fanotify_init(FAN_CLASS_NOTIF | FAN_REPORT_MNT, 0);
    if(ffd < 0){
        perror("fanotify_init");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

    printf("Fanotify fd: %d\n",ffd);

    if(fanotify_mark(ffd, FAN_MARK_ADD | FAN_MARK_MNTNS,
FAN_MNT_ATTACH, AT_FDCWD, "A") < 0){
        perror("fanotify_mark");
        exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
    }

return 0;
}

After the patch

$ gcc fanotify_nullptr.c -o fanotify_nullptr
$ mkdir A
$ ./fanotify_nullptr
Fanotify fd: 3
fanotify_mark: Operation not permitted
$ unshare -Urm
Fanotify fd: 3
fanotify_mark: Invalid argument

[   25.694973] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000038
[   25.695006] #PF: supervisor read access in kernel mode
[   25.695012] #PF: error_code(0x0000) - not-present page
[   25.695017] PGD 109a30067 P4D 109a30067 PUD 142b46067 PMD 0
[   25.695025] Oops: Oops: 0000 [#1] SMP NOPTI
[   25.695032] CPU: 4 UID: 1000 PID: 1478 Comm: fanotify_nullpt Not
tainted 6.17.0-rc4 #1 PREEMPT(lazy)
[   25.695040] Hardware name: VMware, Inc. VMware Virtual
Platform/440BX Desktop Reference Platform, BIOS 6.00 11/12/2020
[   25.695049] RIP: 0010:do_fanotify_mark+0x817/0x950
[   25.695066] Code: 04 00 00 e9 45 fd ff ff 48 8b 7c 24 48 4c 89 54
24 18 4c 89 5c 24 10 4c 89 0c 24 e8 b3 11 fc ff 4c 8b 54 24 18 4c 8b
5c 24 10 <48> 8b 78 38 4c 8b 0c 24 49 89 c4 e9 13 fd ff ff 8b 4c 24 28
85 c9
[   25.695081] RSP: 0018:ffffd31c469e3c08 EFLAGS: 00010203
[   25.695104] RAX: 0000000000000000 RBX: 0000000001000000 RCX: ffff8eb48aebd220
[   25.695110] RDX: 0000000000000000 RSI: 0000000000000000 RDI: ffff8eb4835e8180
[   25.695115] RBP: 0000000000000111 R08: 0000000000000000 R09: 0000000000000000
[   25.695142] R10: ffff8eb48a7d56c0 R11: ffff8eb482bede00 R12: 00000000004012a7
[   25.695148] R13: 0000000000000110 R14: 0000000000000001 R15: ffff8eb48a7d56c0
[   25.695154] FS:  00007f8733bda740(0000) GS:ffff8eb61ce5f000(0000)
knlGS:0000000000000000
[   25.695162] CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 0000000080050033
[   25.695170] CR2: 0000000000000038 CR3: 0000000136994006 CR4: 00000000003706f0
[   25.695201] Call Trace:
[   25.695209]  <TASK>
[   25.695215]  __x64_sys_fanotify_mark+0x1f/0x30
[   25.695222]  do_syscall_64+0x82/0x2c0
...

The Linux kernel CVE team has assigned CVE-2025-40072 to this issue.


Affected and fixed versions
===========================

	Issue introduced in 6.16 with commit 58f5fbeb367ff6f30a2448b2cad70f70b2de4b06 and fixed in 6.17.3 with commit 73ce2a774ad6497cbd48dc4f8a5d699bc417f3fa
	Issue introduced in 6.16 with commit 58f5fbeb367ff6f30a2448b2cad70f70b2de4b06 and fixed in 6.18-rc1 with commit 62e59ffe8787b5550ccff70c30b6f6be6a3ac3dd

Please see https://www.kernel.org for a full list of currently supported
kernel versions by the kernel community.

Unaffected versions might change over time as fixes are backported to
older supported kernel versions.  The official CVE entry at
	https://cve.org/CVERecord/?id=CVE-2025-40072
will be updated if fixes are backported, please check that for the most
up to date information about this issue.


Affected files
==============

The file(s) affected by this issue are:
	fs/notify/fanotify/fanotify_user.c


Mitigation
==========

The Linux kernel CVE team recommends that you update to the latest
stable kernel version for this, and many other bugfixes.  Individual
changes are never tested alone, but rather are part of a larger kernel
release.  Cherry-picking individual commits is not recommended or
supported by the Linux kernel community at all.  If however, updating to
the latest release is impossible, the individual changes to resolve this
issue can be found at these commits:
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/73ce2a774ad6497cbd48dc4f8a5d699bc417f3fa
	https://git.kernel.org/stable/c/62e59ffe8787b5550ccff70c30b6f6be6a3ac3dd