CVE-2026-43188 ceph: do not propagate page array emplacement errors as batch errors

What is CVE-2026-43188?

CVE-2026-43188 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 6 May 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:

ceph: do not propagate page array emplacement errors as batch errors

When fscrypt is enabled, move_dirty_folio_in_page_array() may fail because it needs to allocate bounce buffers to store the encrypted versions of each folio. Each folio beyond the first allocates its bounce buffer with GFP_NOWAIT. Failures are common (and expected) under this allocation mode; they should flush (not abort) the batch.

However, ceph_process_folio_batch() uses the same `rc` variable for its own return code and for capturing the return codes of its routine calls; failing to reset `rc` back to 0 results in the error being propagated out to the main writeback loop, which cannot actually tolerate any errors here: once `ceph_wbc.pages` is allocated, it must be passed to ceph_submit_write() to be freed. If it survives until the next iteration (e.g. due to the goto being followed), ceph_allocate_page_array()'s BUG_ON() will oops the worker.

Note that this failure mode is currently masked due to another bug (addressed next in this series) that prevents multiple encrypted folios from being selected for the same write.

For now, just reset `rc` when redirtying the folio to prevent errors in move_dirty_folio_in_page_array() from propagating. Note that move_dirty_folio_in_page_array() is careful never to return errors on the first folio, so there is no need to check for that. After this change, ceph_process_folio_batch() no longer returns errors; its only remaining failure indicator is `locked_pages == 0`, which the caller already handles correctly.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-43188?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-43188?

Apply the vendor's patch.

Is CVE-2026-43188 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-43188 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Linux kernel

• CVE-2026-53266 Linux Kernel Out-of-Bounds Write Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2013-6282 Linux Kernel Improper Input Validation Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2022-0185 Linux Kernel Heap-Based Buffer Overflow Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2013-2094 Linux Kernel Privilege Escalation Exploited High 8.4
• CVE-2026-53362 Linux Kernel Unspecified Exploited High 7.8

All Linux kernel vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as BELL-CVE-2026-43188, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-43188, GHSA-qpxp-qjrm-7f7r, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-43188.