Vulnerability Database

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Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2026-53062 — linux / linux_kernel

Improper Locking

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

dm cache policy smq: fix missing locks in invalidating cache blocks

In passthrough mode, the policy invalidate_mapping operation is called simultaneously from multiple workers, thus it should be protected by a lock. Otherwise, we might end up with data races on the allocated blocks counter, or even use-after-free issues with internal data structures when doing concurrent writes.

Note that the existing FIXME in smq_invalidate_mapping() doesn't affect passthrough mode since migration tasks don't exist there, but would need attention if supporting fast device shrinking via suspend/resume without target reloading.

Reproduce steps:

  1. Create a cache device consisting of 1024 cache entries

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"

  1. Populate the cache, and record the number of cached blocks

fio --name=populate --filename=/dev/mapper/cache --rw=randwrite --bs=4k
--size=64m --direct=1 nr_cached=$(dmsetup status cache | awk '{split($7, a, "/"); print a[1]}')

  1. 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

  1. Write to the passthrough cache. By setting multiple jobs with I/O size equal to the cache block size, cache blocks are invalidated concurrently from different workers.

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

  1. Check if demoted matches cached block count. These numbers should match but may differ due to the data race.

nr_demoted=$(dmsetup status cache | awk '{print $12}') echo "$nr_cached, $nr_demoted"

  • Published: Jun 24, 2026
  • Updated: Oct 17, 2026
  • CVE: CVE-2026-53062
  • Severity: High
  • Exploit:
  • CISA KEV:

CVSS v3:

  • Severity: High
  • Score: 7.8
  • AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CWEs:

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A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

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