CVE-2025-68821 fuse: fix readahead reclaim deadlock
A deadlock in the Linux kernel FUSE filesystem can cause a system hang when reclaim evicts an inode during readahead, requiring a kernel patch.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2025-68821?
CVE-2025-68821 is a denial of service vulnerability in Linux, published on 13 Jan 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
fuse: fix readahead reclaim deadlock
Commit e26ee4efbc79 ("fuse: allocate ff->release_args only if release is needed") skips allocating ff->release_args if the server does not implement open. However in doing so, fuse_prepare_release() now skips grabbing the reference on the inode, which makes it possible for an inode to be evicted from the dcache while there are inflight readahead requests. This causes a deadlock if the server triggers reclaim while servicing the readahead request and reclaim attempts to evict the inode of the file being read ahead. Since the folio is locked during readahead, when reclaim evicts the fuse inode and fuse_evict_inode() attempts to remove all folios associated with the inode from the page cache (truncate_inode_pages_range()), reclaim will block forever waiting for the lock since readahead cannot relinquish the lock because it is itself blocked in reclaim:
>>> stack_trace(1504735) folio_wait_bit_common (mm/filemap.c:1308:4) folio_lock (./include/linux/pagemap.h:1052:3) truncate_inode_pages_range (mm/truncate.c:336:10) fuse_evict_inode (fs/fuse/inode.c:161:2) evict (fs/inode.c:704:3) dentry_unlink_inode (fs/dcache.c:412:3) __dentry_kill (fs/dcache.c:615:3) shrink_kill (fs/dcache.c:1060:12) shrink_dentry_list (fs/dcache.c:1087:3) prune_dcache_sb (fs/dcache.c:1168:2) super_cache_scan (fs/super.c:221:10) do_shrink_slab (mm/shrinker.c:435:9) shrink_slab (mm/shrinker.c:626:10) shrink_node (mm/vmscan.c:5951:2) shrink_zones (mm/vmscan.c:6195:3) do_try_to_free_pages (mm/vmscan.c:6257:3) do_swap_page (mm/memory.c:4136:11) handle_pte_fault (mm/memory.c:5562:10) handle_mm_fault (mm/memory.c:5870:9) do_user_addr_fault (arch/x86/mm/fault.c:1338:10) handle_page_fault (arch/x86/mm/fault.c:1481:3) exc_page_fault (arch/x86/mm/fault.c:1539:2) asm_exc_page_fault+0x22/0x27
Fix this deadlock by allocating ff->release_args and grabbing the reference on the inode when preparing the file for release even if the server does not implement open. The inode reference will be dropped when the last reference on the fuse file is dropped (see fuse_file_put() -> fuse_release_end()).
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-68821?
How do I fix CVE-2025-68821?
Apply the vendor's patch.
Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.
Is CVE-2025-68821 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-68821 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as BELL-CVE-2025-68821, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-68821, GHSA-f22g-qgpg-jxxv, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2025-68821, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-13-CVE-2025-68821, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2025-68821 and 1 more.