CVE-2026-45961 gfs2: fix memory leaks in gfs2_fill_super error path

What is CVE-2026-45961?

CVE-2026-45961 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 27 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:

gfs2: fix memory leaks in gfs2_fill_super error path

Fix two memory leaks in the gfs2_fill_super() error handling path when transitioning a filesystem to read-write mode fails.

First leak: kthread objects (thread_struct, task_struct, etc.) When gfs2_freeze_lock_shared() fails after init_threads() succeeds, the created kernel threads (logd and quotad) are never destroyed. This occurs because the fail_per_node label doesn't call gfs2_destroy_threads().

Second leak: quota bitmap buffer (8192 bytes) When gfs2_make_fs_rw() fails after gfs2_quota_init() succeeds but before other operations complete, the allocated quota bitmap is never freed.

The fix moves thread cleanup to the fail_per_node label to handle all error paths uniformly. gfs2_destroy_threads() is safe to call unconditionally as it checks for NULL pointers. Quota cleanup is added in gfs2_make_fs_rw() to properly handle the withdrawal case where quota initialization succeeds but the filesystem is then withdrawn.

Thread leak backtrace (gfs2_freeze_lock_shared failure): unreferenced object 0xffff88801d7bca80 (size 4480): copy_process+0x3a1/0x4670 kernel/fork.c:2422 kernel_clone+0xf3/0x6e0 kernel/fork.c:2779 kthread_create_on_node+0x100/0x150 kernel/kthread.c:478 init_threads+0xab/0x350 fs/gfs2/ops_fstype.c:611 gfs2_fill_super+0xe5c/0x1240 fs/gfs2/ops_fstype.c:1265

Quota leak backtrace (gfs2_make_fs_rw failure): unreferenced object 0xffff88812de7c000 (size 8192): gfs2_quota_init+0xe5/0x820 fs/gfs2/quota.c:1409 gfs2_make_fs_rw+0x7a/0xe0 fs/gfs2/super.c:149 gfs2_fill_super+0xfbb/0x1240 fs/gfs2/ops_fstype.c:1275

Weakness: CWE-401

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-45961?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-45961?

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-2026-45961 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-45961 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 AZL-88755, BELL-CVE-2026-45961, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-45961, GHSA-848w-4wg8-36v4, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-45961, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2026-45961 and 4 more.