CVE-2026-53060 dm cache metadata: fix memory leak on metadata abort retry

What is CVE-2026-53060?

CVE-2026-53060 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 24 Jun 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:

dm cache metadata: fix memory leak on metadata abort retry

When failing to acquire the root_lock in dm_cache_metadata_abort because the block_manager is read-only, the temporary block_manager created outside the root_lock is not properly released, causing a memory leak.

Reproduce steps:

This can be reproduced by reloading a new table while the metadata is read-only. While the second call to dm_cache_metadata_abort is caused by lack of support for table preload in dm-cache, mentioned in commit 9b1cc9f251af ("dm cache: share cache-metadata object across inactive and active DM tables"), it exposes the memory leak in dm_cache_metadata_abort when the function is called multiple times. Specifically, dm-cache fails to sync the new cache object's mode during preresume, creating the reproducer condition.

This issue could also occur through concurrent metadata_operation_failed calls due to races in cache mode updates, but the table preload scenario below provides a reliable reproducer.

1. Create a cache device with some faulty trailing metadata blocks

dmsetup create cmeta <<EOF 0 200 linear /dev/sdc 0 200 7992 error EOF 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 131072 cache /dev/mapper/cmeta \ /dev/mapper/cdata /dev/mapper/corig 128 1 writethrough smq 0"

2. Suspend and resume the cache to start a new metadata transaction and trigger metadata io errors on the next metadata commit.

dmsetup suspend cache dmsetup resume cache

3. Write to the cache device to update metadata

fio --filename=/dev/mapper/cache --name test --rw=randwrite --bs=4k \ --randrepeat=0 --direct=1 --size 64k

4. Preload the same table

dmsetup reload cache --table "$(dmsetup table cache)"

5. Resume the new table. This triggers the memory leak.

dmsetup suspend cache dmsetup resume cache

kmemleak logs:

<snip> unreferenced object 0xffff8880080c2010 (size 16): comm "dmsetup", pid 132, jiffies 4294982580 hex dump (first 16 bytes): 00 38 b9 07 80 88 ff ff 6a 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b 6b a5 ... backtrace (crc 3118f31c): kmemleak_alloc+0x28/0x40 __kmalloc_cache_noprof+0x3d9/0x510 dm_block_manager_create+0x51/0x140 dm_cache_metadata_abort+0x85/0x320 metadata_operation_failed+0x103/0x1e0 cache_preresume+0xacd/0xe70 dm_table_resume_targets+0xd3/0x320 __dm_resume+0x1b/0xf0 dm_resume+0x127/0x170 <snip>

Weakness: CWE-401

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-53060?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-53060?

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-2026-53060 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-53060 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-2026-53060, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-53060, GHSA-w7r8-qc4c-gqhh, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2026-53060, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2404-CVE-2026-53060, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-53060.