CVE-2026-53061 dm cache: fix dirty mapping checking in passthrough mode switching

What is CVE-2026-53061?

CVE-2026-53061 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Linux kernel, published on 24 Jun 2026.

Official description

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

dm cache: fix dirty mapping checking in passthrough mode switching

As mentioned in commit 9b1cc9f251af ("dm cache: share cache-metadata object across inactive and active DM tables"), dm-cache assumed table reload occurs after suspension, while LVM's table preload breaks this assumption. The dirty mapping check for passthrough mode was designed around this assumption and is performed during table creation, causing the check to fail with preload while metadata updates are ongoing. This risks loading dirty mappings into passthrough mode, resulting in data loss.

Reproduce steps:

1. Create a writeback cache with zero migration_threshold to produce dirty mappings

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 writeback smq \ 2 migration_threshold 0"

2. Preload a table in passthrough mode

dmsetup reload cache --table "0 262144 cache /dev/mapper/cmeta \ /dev/mapper/cdata /dev/mapper/corig 128 2 metadata2 passthrough smq 0"

3. Write to the first cache block to make it dirty

fio --filename=/dev/mapper/cache --name=populate --rw=write --bs=4k \ --direct=1 --size=64k

4. Resume the inactive table. Now it's possible to load the dirty block into passthrough mode.

dmsetup resume cache

Fix by moving the checks to the preresume phase to support table preloading. Also remove the unused function dm_cache_metadata_all_clean.

Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-53061?

It affects 1 product.

Products include Linux kernel.

How do I fix CVE-2026-53061?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Is CVE-2026-53061 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-53061 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-2026-53061, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-53061, GHSA-h3w6-62jw-v8p3, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-53061, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2026-53061, ROOT-OS-UBUNTU-2204-CVE-2026-53061 and 2 more.